A method for repairing an article made of a fiber-reinforced ceramic matrix composite comprises attaching sections of a fiber-reinforced tape to the damaged area and then infiltrating the sections with the ceramic matrix or ceramic matrix precursor material. Compositions of the invention also can serve effectively as a hard mask layer by exhibiting a sufficient plasma etch selectivity from an undercoated layer. The statistical information updater generates statistical information, which indicates the frequency of occurrence of a statistical quantity in each pixel of the input image, based on the input image from the image input unit. A valid distance within the remote edge of the rim loop ring is set in the detector.