PURPOSE: To surely segment a character even in the case that the character is blurred by segmenting the character on the basis of a density gradient.

CONSTITUTION: A picture input means 10 picture-inputs a pattern to be recognized, and picture input information is pre-processed by a pre-processing means 11, and is inputted to a character segmenting means 12, and after the character is segmented, it is inputted to a picture element component extracting means 20, and a picture element component consisting of the density gradient direction component and the density gradient intensity component of every picture element of inputted picture data is extracted. Besides, a feature quantity extracting means 30 divides a picture inputted by the picture input means 10 into (m×n)- pieces of meshes by an area dividing means 31, and extracts the total sum of the density gradient intensity components of every density gradient direction component extracted by the picture element component extracting means 20 for every divided area in a vector quantity extracting means 32, and makes it the feature quantity of the pattern to be recognized. By segmenting the character by extracting density gradient information in a horizontal and a vertical directions in this way, the character can be correctly segmented even if the character is blurred.