According to one embodiment, a character detection apparatus includes a feature extractor, a determiner and an integrator. The feature extractor extracts a feature value of an image including character strings. The determiner determines each priority of a plurality of different character detection schemes in accordance with character detection accuracy with respect to an image region having a feature corresponding to the feature value. The integrator integrates text line candidates of the character detection schemes, and selects, as a text line, one of the text line candidates detected by the character detection scheme with the highest priority if a superimposition degree indicating a ratio of a superimposed region among the text line candidates is no less than a first threshold value.