text: 1. Field of the Invention
  The present invention relates to data processing apparatuses and data processing methods, and more particularly, to a data processing apparatus and a data processing method which allow noise included in data to be removed more effectively.
  2. Description of the Related Art
  In general, data such as transmitted or reproduced image data and sound data includes noise which changes as time elapses. To remove the noise included in the data, there have been known methods in which the average, namely, the whole average, of the whole input data is obtained and in which the average of a part of the input data, which is called a moving average, is obtained.
  The method in which the whole average is calculated is effective when the degree of noise included in data, namely, the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N ratio) of the data, is uniform. When the S/N ratio of data varies, however, a portion of the data having a low S/N ratio affects a portion of the data having a high S/N ratio to make it difficult to remove the noise effectively in some cases.
  In the method in which the moving average is calculated, since the average of data positioned close to the current input data in the time domain is obtained, the processing result is affected by a change in the S/N ratio of the data. In other words, the processing result has a high S/N ratio for a portion of the data having a high S/N ratio, but the processing result has a low S/N ratio for a portion of the data having a low S/N ratio.
  Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to solve the foregoing drawbacks.
  The foregoing object is achieved in one aspect of the present invention through the provision of a data processing apparatus for processing input data and outputting the processed data, including: a data processing section for processing the input data by a predetermined processing method and outputting the processed data; an input-data evaluation section for evaluating the input data; an output-data evaluation section for evaluating the output data, and a real-time learning section for controlling such that the processing method is learned in real time according to the evaluation results obtained by the input-data evaluation section and the output-data evaluation section and the data processing section processes the input data according to the learned processing method.
  The foregoing object is achieved in another aspect of the present invention through the provision of a data processing method for processing input data and outputting the processed data, including: a data processing step for processing the input data by a predetermined processing method and outputting the processed data; an input-data evaluation step for evaluating the input data; an output-data evaluation step for evaluating the output data, and a real-time learning step for controlling such that the processing method is learned in real time according to the evaluation results obtained in the input-data evaluation step and the output-data evaluation step and the input data is processed in the data processing step by the learned processing method.