Patent ID: 9319568
Filing Date: 2016-04-19
CPC Classification: A61B,H04N

Claim Text:
1. An endoscope system comprising: an imaging device having a solid-state imaging element mounted at a tip of an insertion part of an endoscope; an external control device connected as an external device for the endoscope to the imaging device via a signal line and controlling the imaging device; an encoding device in the imaging device, the encoding device sequentially encoding pixel data for each pixel sequentially outputted from the solid-state imaging element as an imaging signal for sequential conversion to word data for each word; an imaging signal transmitting device in the imaging device, the imaging signal transmitting device converting the imaging signal obtained by the sequential conversion to word data by the encoding device from a parallel signal to a serial signal and transmitting the converted imaging signal to the external control device through the signal line; an imaging signal receiving device in the external control device, the imaging signal receiving device receiving the imaging signal transmitted by the imaging signal transmitting device and sequentially converting word data sequentially received as the imaging signal from the serial signal to a parallel signal for each word; a decoding device in the external control device, the decoding device sequentially decoding the word data obtained by the sequential conversion to the parallel signal by the imaging signal receiving device for each word for sequential conversion to pixel data for each pixel before the encoding is performed by the encoding device; a storage device storing pixel data obtained by the sequential conversion by the decoding device; a decode error detecting device in the decoding device, the decode error detecting device detecting an occurrence of a decode error indicative of a failure of the decoding; and an interpolating device, when the occurrence of the decode error is detected by the decode error detecting device, interpolating pixel data of an error pixel by storing, in a memory area of the storage device where the pixel data of the error pixel is to be stored with a pixel at a time of the occurrence of the decode error being taken as the error pixel, interpolation data generated based on pixel data of one or a plurality of pixels forming a peripheral part of the error pixel, wherein the imaging device includes a synchronous data inserting device inserting word synchronous data into the imaging signal to be transmitted to the external control device, the synchronous data is used to synchronize the word data, and the external control device includes a synchronization processing device detecting the word synchronous data in the imaging signal received from the imaging signal receiving device and, based on the detected word synchronous data, adjusting a timing of delimiting into word data for each word in the conversion by the imaging signal receiving device to the parallel signal or the conversion by the decoding device to the pixel data, to make word synchronization.