of areas and performing data analysis on pixels of an image pickup device in a specified area application_number US 60639000 A description previously for example as shown in fig3 it has been considered that cutting out the central rectangle creates peripheral areas according to the present invention however as shown in fig4 it becomes possible to easily specify non rectangular peripheral areas with a definition of a minimum number of rectangular areas such specification of non rectangular areas has been troublesome according to conventional methods this is solved by introducing a concept of layers an optical black area 302 and a color filter area 303 are overlapped on area 301 covering the whole of an image plane four divided areas 304 305 306 307 are overlapped thereon and central area 308 is overlapped further at this moment the upper and lower relationship of the respective layers can be specified according to the magnitude of a priority value for each layer for example numerical values such as 3 2 1 0 u2212 1 with larger numbers indicating upper layers or by some other ordering methods since the concept of layers is also necessary in the manufacturing process of an optical black and a color filter of an actual image pickup device it is also familiar to the test engineer who develops a test program and the intuitiveness of pattern recognition is also good for.