IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR DETECTING PARTIALLY VISIBLE OBJECT APPROACHING FROM SIDE USING EQUI-HEIGHT PERIPHERAL MOSAICKING IMAGE, AND DRIVING ASSISTANCE SYSTEM EMPLOYING THE SAME

Provided are an image processing apparatus and method, and a driving assistance system employing the same. The image processing apparatus includes a peripheral region extracting unit extracting, from an image, peripheral regions corresponding to a size of a target object determined in advance, a modifying unit modifying the peripheral regions to allow a viewpoint for the peripheral regions to be changed, a mosaicking image creating unit creating a mosaicking image by stitching the modified peripheral regions together, and an object detection unit detecting an object including a part of the target object from the mosaicking image.