Patent ID: 9392942
Filing Date: 2016-07-19
CPC Classification: A61B,G06T

Claim Text:
1. A fluoroscopy apparatus comprising: a light source that irradiates an observation target with reference light and excitation light; a fluorescence-image generating unit that captures fluorescence emitted from the observation target irradiated with the excitation light from the light source to generate a fluorescence image; a reference-image generating unit that captures return light returning from the observation target irradiated with the reference light from the light source to generate a reference image; an image-combining unit that superimposes the fluorescence image generated by the fluorescence-image generating unit on the reference image generated by the reference-image generating unit to generate a combined image; a determining unit that compares a luminance at each position in the reference image generated by the reference-image generating unit with a predetermined threshold to determine whether there is a position with a luminance at or below the predetermined threshold; a notifying unit that, if the determining unit determines that there is a position with a luminance at or below the predetermined threshold, provides notification thereof; and a hue-identifying unit that identifies the hue at each position in the reference image generated by the reference-image generating unit, wherein the image-combining unit colors the fluorescence image in a predetermined hue and superimposes the fluorescence image on the reference image, and wherein the determining unit sets a visibility limit threshold as the predetermined threshold for each position in the reference image depending on the contrast between the predetermined hue and the hue identified by the hue-identifying unit.