PURPOSE: To represent a binary figure pattern so as to be suitable for noise elimination and recognition processing as curtailing the quantity of calculation.

CONSTITUTION: A binarization processing part 1 reads in and binarizes a picture, and an extreme value point code generating part 2 generates the code sequence of an extreme value point (maxima value or minima value of y-coordinate) from the contour of the picture. The extreme value point is classified into four types of d, Intersection, Union, P, and by circling around the contour, the train of each letter d, Intersection, Union, p is outputted in the order of the appearance of the type of the extreme value point, and the contour of the picture is represented. A character recognizing part 5 classifies broadly characters in accordance with the generated code sequence of the extreme value point.