Patent ID: 6663561
Filing Date: 2003-12-16
Classification: A61B,H04N

Abstract:
A video endoscope system comprising:an illuminating optical system that guides light to an object under examination; a light source unit that emits visible light and excitation light for exciting a living tissue of the object to cause fluorescence, and that alternately transmits the visible light and the excitation light to said illuminating optical system so that a period during which the excitation light is transmitted to the illuminating optical system is longer than a period during which the visible light is transmitted to the illuminating optical system; an objective optical system that converges optical components of light coming from a surface of the object, other than the excitation light, to form an image of the object; an image pickup device that picks up the image of the object formed by said objective optical system and converts the image into a video signal; and a processor that generates a reference video signal based on the video signal obtained by said image pickup device during the period when the visible light is transmitted to said illuminating optical system, and that generates a fluorescence video signal based on the video signal obtained by the image pickup device during the period when the excitation light is transmitted to said illuminating optical system, said processor generating a video signal to be used for diagnosis by subtracting the fluorescence video signal from the reference video signal.