Patent ID: 7838818

Claim:
A light-stimulus illumination apparatus comprising: a light source configured to emit light-stimulus laser light; a scanning unit including a first acousto-optic device configured to scan the light-stimulus laser light emitted from the light source in a first direction intersecting an optical axis, and a second acousto-optic device configured to scan the light-stimulus laser light emitted from the light source in a second direction intersecting the optical axis and orthogonal to the first direction; and a control unit configured to control the scanning unit so that the light-stimulus laser light irradiates a plurality of spatially separated regions including a first region and a second region in a time-division manner, wherein the control unit is configured to control the scanning unit to scan the light-stimulus laser light in the second region right after finishing scanning the light-stimulus laser light in the first region by switching a frequency of each command signal input to the first and second acousto-optic devices discontinuously from a frequency corresponding to a scanning end point of the first region to a frequency corresponding to a scanning starting point of the second region so that the light-stimulus laser light does not irradiate an area between the first region and the second region.