PURPOSE: To extract the eye image of a driver positively to detect the driving state by processing the face image of the photographed driver.

CONSTITUTION: An image from a camera 10 for photographing a vehicle driver is supplied to an image processing device 12. The image processing device 12 extracts a face area using a standard template stored in a memory 14. The image processing device 12 then extracts plural prospective eye areas from the extracted face area using the standard template and extracts a true eye area image from plural prospective eye areas using layout data on the layout of eyebrows and eyes. With the extracted eye area image as an object template, the correlative arithmetic result to the input image is outputted to an ECU 16 to monitor the state of eyes.