Apparatus and method for processing stereoscopic images

A stereo matching section of a stereoscopic image processing unit evaluates a correlation of brightness between a reference pixel block picked up from a right image and a comparison pixel block picked up from a left image and calculates a parallax between these two pixel blocks having the correlation. A region control section changes over the size of these pixel blocks according to the area in which the stereo matching is performed so as to obtain a more accurate three-dimensional recognition.