PARTICULAR-REGION DETECTION METHOD AND APPARATUS

A particular-region such as red-eye region of a person in an image is detected at a high speed by a particular-region detection apparatus, as follows. At first, a region of the image satisfying detection conditions for particular region candidates is detected as a particular region candidate. Next, a face region of a first person is detected and the particular region candidate is specified as a particular region to be detected on condition that the particular region candidate is included in the detected face region. Then, face information regarding a face of the first person obtained when the face region is detected is stored. When a face region of a second person is further detected in the image or other image after storing of the face information, the face information is accessed and recalled and the face region of the second person is detected by using the face information as a face detection condition.