Image processing apparatus and image processing method

An image processing method comprising:

• a calculation step of calculating correlation values of captured images of a plurality of pairs of viewpoints, using captured images of the viewpoints;
• and
• a generation step of generating parallax images of different hierarchical levels of a reference viewpoint based on the correlation values calculated in the calculation step, the parallax images being a viewpoint parallax image formed with a disparity value of the reference viewpoint and an occlusion parallax image formed with a disparity value of an occlusion region, the reference viewpoint being one of the viewpoints,
• the calculation step and the generation step being carried out by an image processing apparatus.

An image processing method comprising:

• a calculation step of calculating correlation values of captured images of a plurality of pairs of viewpoints, using captured images of the viewpoints;
• and
• a generation step of generating a viewpoint parallax image based on a table associating a pattern of the correlation values of the respective pairs with a predetermined pair among the pairs of viewpoints, the viewpoint parallax image being generated from a highest correlation disparity value as the disparity value corresponding to the highest correlation value of the predetermined pair, the viewpoint parallax image being formed with a disparity value of a reference viewpoint, the reference viewpoint being one of the viewpoints,
• the calculation step and the generation step being carried out by an image processing apparatus.