IMAGE PROCESSING DEVICE AND METHOD

An image processing device including: a local mean image generating section; a binarization image generating section configured to generate a binarization image, wherein pixels corresponding to high frequency regions and low frequency regions have a first and second grey scales, respectively; a ternarization image generating section configured to divide, based on comparison between the image and the local mean image, first grey scale regions in the binarization image into regions having the first grey scale and regions having a third grey scale; a filling section configured to recognize connected regions having the second grey scale in the ternarization image, to fill the connected regions with the first grey scale or with the third grey scale according to grey scale of pixels at boundaries of the connected regions; and a recognizing section configured to recognize strokes according to consistency of grey scale at object boundaries in the filled ternarization image.