Patent ID: 8477183
Filing Date: 2013-07-02
Classification: A61B,G02B,H04N

Abstract:
1. An endoscope system that includes an endoscope for emitting illumination light with which a subject is irradiated, comprising: an illumination unit for emitting illumination light with which a subject is irradiated; an image pickup unit that is provided to the endoscope and that is for picking up an image of the subject illuminated by illumination light; a photometric signal generation unit for generating a photometric signal from the image pickup unit; a first computation unit for computing/outputting a first light adjustment signal in accordance with the photometric signal generation unit; a computation unit state detection unit for detecting a state of the first computation unit; a second computation unit for executing partial control of the endoscope system, that is provided as a computation unit different from the first computation unit, and that computes/outputs a second light adjustment signal in accordance with the photometric signal generation unit together with executing the partial control while suppressing an increase in a processing load when the computation unit state detection unit has determined the first computation unit to be abnormal; a light adjustment signal control unit for outputting the first light adjustment signal computed/output by the first computation unit when the computation unit state detection unit has determined the first computation unit to be normal, and for outputting the second light adjustment signal computed/output by the second computation unit when the computation unit state detection unit has determined the first computation unit to be abnormal; and a light adjustment unit for regulating the illumination light in accordance with the light adjustment signal output from the light adjustment signal control unit.