IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND METHOD

The present invention provides an image processing apparatus and method that enables extraction of line segments of an arbitrary width from multi-valued images not uniform in background. To extract line segment data constituting a line segment, image data is scanned using a line segment basic element to extract line segment data from the image data. In other words, pixel data included in the line segment basic element is used as one unit and it is judged for each unit whether the pixel data corresponds to line segment data. Thereby, even if the densities of pixel data corresponding to, e.g., backgrounds are not uniform, by judging the line segment basic element as one unit, line segment data of a line segment width to be extracted can be extracted free of the influence of the densities being not uniform.