Patent ID: 9749603
Date: 2017-08-29
CPC Classifications: G03B,H04N,H05B

Claim:
1. A light source unit comprising: a plurality of elemental light sources each including one or more light emitting elements, one or more drive circuits, a focusing optical system, and an optical fiber, the light source unit being configured to integrate radiated light from exit ends of the respective optical fibers and to output one output luminous flux, the one or more drive circuits being provided corresponding to the respective light emitting elements and being configured to selectively operate in a driving state that allows a specified current to flow through the corresponding light emitting element or in a non-driving state that allows the current not to flow through the corresponding light emitting element, the focusing optical system being configured to focus lights emitted from the one or more light emitting elements, and the optical fiber being configured to receive a light focused by the focusing optical system at an incident end of the optical fiber, and the optical fiber being configured to guide the light and radiate the light from the exit end; an optical sensor configured to be irradiated with at least a part of the output luminous flux; a light quantity measurement circuit configured to generate a light quantity measurement data correlated with a light quantity of the output luminous flux, based on a quantity of incident light to the optical sensor; and a control circuit configured to control the drive circuits based on the light quantity measurement data, to perform a sequence that sequentially acquires the light quantity measurement data by sequentially selecting one of the plurality of elemental light sources, putting at least one of the one or more drive circuits included in the selected elemental light source into a first state, and putting the plurality of drive circuits other than the at least one drive circuits into a second state, and to detect abnormality based on a measurement data set formed of a plurality of pieces of the acquired light quantity measurement data, wherein the first state being one of the driving state and the non-driving state, and the second state being the other of the driving state and the non-driving state, wherein the plurality of light emitting elements being configured to emit lights different in wavelength band from one another, the optical sensor includes a plurality of optical sensors provided corresponding to the wavelength bands, each of the optical sensors includes a spectral filter that allows light of the corresponding wavelength band to selectively pass through the spectral filter, the light quantity measurement data includes a plurality of pieces of light quantity measurement data correlated with light quantity of each of the wavelength bands in the output luminous flux, and the control circuit being configured to acquire at least light quantity measurement data corresponding to a light emission wavelength band of the light emitting element supplied with the specified current, out of the plurality of pieces of light quantity measurement data.