Generic object-based image recognition apparatus with exclusive classifier, and method for the same

The present invention provides an image recognition apparatus with enhanced performance and robustness. In an image recognition apparatus 1, an image classification information accumulating unit 20 stores therein feature information defining visual features of various objects obtained through a learning process. For classification of input images, an image feature obtaining unit 18 extracts descriptors indicating features from each input image, image vocabularies corresponding to the descriptors are voted, and a classifying unit 19 calculates existence probabilities of one or more candidate objects, based on the result of the voting. According to the existence probabilities, objects contained in the image is identified. Through the calculation, the existence probabilities are adjusted by an exclusive classifier, based on exclusive relationship information defining exclusive object sets each containing different objects (object labels) predicted not to coexist in a same image.