IMAGE SYNTHESIS APPARATUS AND IMAGE SYNTHESIS METHOD

Disclosed are an image synthesis apparatus and an image synthesis method. According to the present invention, an image synthesis apparatus, for synthesizing a plurality of images to generate a synthesis image, selects for an image synthesis unit two or more images from among a plurality of images, and stores image information for the selected images, employs the stored image information to generate coordinate transformation parameters that are used to set a positional relationship for the selected images before these images are synthesized to obtain a single image, changes the generated coordinate transformation parameters by using as a reference a position location for an arbitrary image selected from among the plurality of images, provides the resultant coordinate transformation parameters as image synthesis information, and synthesizes the images in accordance with the image synthesis information. With this arrangement, even when there are many images to be synthesized, the positions of images can be precisely aligned without a large, permanent memory area being required for the storage of image data to be synthesized. Also, the characteristic of a synthesized image can be determined by employing as a reference the characteristic of an arbitrary image selected from among a plurality of images to be synthesized.