Patent ID: 7570363

Claim:
A measuring endoscope apparatus comprising: a light source unit provided with a low coherence light source that emits low coherence light; a probe that illuminates an observation object with said low coherence light and that collects light reflected by said observation object; and a single optical fiber that optically connects the probe and the light source unit; wherein said light source unit further includes a first low coherence light splitting part that splits the low coherence light emitted from the low coherence light source into a first low coherence light and a second low coherence light; an optical path length adjustment part that adjusts the optical path length of said first low coherence light; and an optical multiplexing part that multiplexes said first low coherence light, after it has passed through the optical path length adjustment part, and said second low coherence light onto said single optical fiber; and said probe includes a second low coherence light splitting part that splits said first low coherence light from light transmitted through said single optical fiber; a low coherence light multiplexing part that multiplexes said second low coherence light after it has been reflected by said observation object and said first low coherence light split by said second low coherence light splitting part; a lens that forms images using light returned from said observation object; and an image detector that captures an interference pattern of the multiplexed low coherence lights.