Patent ID: 6529768
Filing Date: 2003-03-04
Classification: A61B,H04N

Abstract:
A method of acquiring a fluorescence image, comprising the steps of:i) detecting intrinsic fluorescence, which has been produced from living body tissues when excitation light is irradiated to the living body tissues, with an image sensor, the excitation light causing the living body tissues to produce the intrinsic fluorescence, and ii) reading out the detected intrinsic fluorescence as an image, wherein the image is acquired by setting the image sensor such that a reading frequency, an area of one pixel, a total number of pixels, a number of pixels subjected to pixel binning, a number of reading ports, an exposure time, a quantum efficiency, an electron multiplication factor, and a sensor temperature of the image sensor satisfy the following condition formula: RN+DN<0.22Ã—PÃ—HÃ—G â€ƒin which RN represents the number of electric charges occurring due to reading noise, DN represents the number of electric charges occurring due to dark noise, P represents the irradiation output of the excitation light (in mW), H represents the quantum efficiency of the image sensor, and G represents the electron multiplication factor of the image sensor.