Patent ID: 8211009

Claim:
An endoscope bending control apparatus comprising: an image feature value calculating section for calculating, based on an endoscopic image acquired by an image pickup device in an endoscope including the image pickup device and a bending portion on a distal end side of an insertion portion, an image feature value related to a luminal dark part in a lumen into which the insertion portion is inserted; a bending control section for performing bending control on the bending portion in either one of a first bending operation mode in which a position of the luminal dark part is set as an insertion target based on the calculated image feature value and a distal end of the insertion portion is directed to the position and a second bending operation mode in which a current position of the luminal dark part is estimated with reference to history information including the position of the luminal dark part calculated in the past and the distal end of the insertion portion is directed in a direction of the estimated position of the luminal dark part; an operation mode switching section for switching an operation mode from one of the first and the second bending operation modes to the other of the first and the second bending operation modes according to a first switching condition based on the calculated image feature value; and a switching condition changing section for changing a switching condition from the first switching condition used for switching between the bending operation modes to a second switching condition different from the first switching condition.