Patent ID: 9635343
Date: 2017-04-25
CPC Classifications: A61B,G02B,G06T,H04N

Claim:
1. A stereoscopic endoscopic image processing apparatus, comprising: at least one processor programmed to execute: a synchronization adjustment portion configured to perform a synchronization adjustment between a left-eye image signal that represents a left-eye image and a right-eye image signal that represents a right-eye image, based on output signals of left and right image pickup devices provided in a stereoscopic endoscope; an image analysis portion configured to analyze a region that an image of a treatment instrument occupies in a peripheral region around a central region in an image of at least one image signal among the left-eye image signal and the right-eye image signal; a blur region setting portion configured to, with respect to an image in the peripheral region that is disposed around an image in the central region in which blur processing is not performed, set a region in which to perform blur processing in accordance with an analysis result of the image analysis portion; an image compositing portion configured to composite and output a 3D image with respect to which blur processing is performed on the left-eye image and the right-eye image, respectively, in accordance with a synchronization adjustment result of the synchronization adjustment portion and a setting result of the blur region setting portion; wherein the image analysis portion includes: an image dividing portion configured to segment the peripheral region around the central region in the image that is obtained by the image signal that is inputted, to thereby divide the peripheral region into a predetermined number of regions; a color component analysis portion configured to analyze color components in each of the predetermined number of regions; an image edge component extraction portion configured to extract an edge component of a straight component in each of the regions; and a treatment instrument region evaluation portion configured to evaluate a size of a region that an image of the treatment instrument occupies in the peripheral region based on an analysis result of the color component analysis portion and an extraction result of the image edge component extraction portion.