SIMILAR IMAGE RETRIEVING APPARATUS, THREE-DIMENSIONAL IMAGE DATABASE APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR CONSTRUCTING THREE-DIMENSIONAL IMAGE DATABASE

A similar image retrieving means has a region of interest setting portion, a feature quantity calculation portion, a similarity calculation portion and an image selection portion. A part of the three-dimensional image of the retrieval object is set as a region of interest. The feature quantity calculation portion calculates the quantity of the region of interest. The similarity calculation portion calculates the similarity between the retrieval object and the three-dimensional image data stored in advance by comparing the feature quantity of the region of interest of the retrieval object which quantity is calculated with the feature quantity calculation means with the three-dimensional image data where the region of interest is set which is stored in advance in the image database, and the feature quantity of this region of interest is calculated. The image selection portion selects similar images in an order of decreasing similarity from the image database.