Capacitance detecting circuit and method, and fingerprint sensor using the same

In a capacitance detecting circuit, changes in capacitances at intersections between a plurality of row lines and a column line are detected as voltages. The capacitance detecting circuit includes a column-line driver (5) for driving the column line. A code generator (1, 1B) generates code having orthogonality in chronological order. A selection synthesizer selects a certain number of row lines from the plurality of row lines by using the code and synthesizes measured voltages at the intersections between the selected row lines and the driven column line so as to output the synthesized measured voltage. A decoding computation unit (10) separates the measured voltages corresponding to the capacitances at the intersections by performing product sum computation between the synthesized measured voltage and the code.