For the purpose of providing an image processing method for efficiently performing
filtering, a local region containing a pixel of interest is defined in a plurality
of modes in an original image (502); sequentially for the region in the
plurality of modes, the variance of pixel values is obtained and a decision is
made whether the value of the variance falls within a predetermined range (504,
506, 508 512, 514); and an image is produced using as a new pixel value for
the pixel of interest an average value of pixel values of the region for which
the value of the variance first falls within the range (508, 510, 524).
