Image processing apparatus and image sensing apparatus

1. An image processing apparatus comprising:

a track signal setting portion which sets a track signal which is a signal indicating a track object in an input image;

an auxiliary track signal setting portion which sets an auxiliary track signal which indicates the track object and is a signal different from the track signal; and

a track target detection portion which detects the track object by detecting the track signal from the input image, wherein

the track signal setting portion is capable of performing a switching operation of setting the auxiliary track signal as a new track signal instead of the set track signal.

2. An image processing apparatus according to claim 1 , further comprising:

a search area setting portion which sets a search area in the input image; and

an image analysis portion which determines a frequency distribution of a signal in the search area, wherein

the auxiliary track signal setting portion sets the auxiliary track signal based on the frequency distribution,

the track signal setting portion decides whether the track signal is correct or not based on the frequency distribution and performs the switching operation if it is decided that the set track signal is incorrect, and

the track target detection portion detects the track signal from the image in the search area.

3. An image processing apparatus according to claim 2 , wherein the auxiliary track signal setting portion sets a signal having a higher frequency in the frequency distribution with higher priority as the auxiliary track signal.

4. An image processing apparatus according to claim 2 , wherein the input image is supplied to the image processing apparatus sequentially, so that the image analysis portion outputs the frequency distribution sequentially, and the auxiliary track signal setting portion sets a signal having a frequency above a predetermined threshold value a predetermined times successively with respect to the frequency distribution output sequentially as the auxiliary track signal.

5. An image processing apparatus according to claim 2 , wherein the auxiliary track signal setting portion sets the auxiliary track signal by excluding a signal indicating a background of the input image.

6. An image sensing apparatus comprising:

an image sensing portion which generates an input image by image sensing; and

an image processing apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein

the image sensing apparatus performs control based on a result of the detection of the track object by the image processing apparatus.

7. An image processing apparatus comprising:

a first track signal detecting portion which detects from sequentially input shot images a first track signal that is a signal indicating a certain object;

a second track signal detecting portion which detects a second track signal that is a signal indicating the certain object but that is different from the first track signal; and

a track signal setting portion which sets either of the first and second track signals as a track signal based on results of detection by the first and second track signal detecting portions,

wherein the image processing apparatus detects the certain object by detecting the track signal.

8. An image sensing apparatus comprising:

an image sensing portion which generates an input image by image sensing; and

the image processing apparatus according to claim 7 ,

wherein the image sensing apparatus performs control based on a result of detection of the track object by the image processing apparatus.