Patent ID: 7538795

Claim:
A monitor device for displaying a front scene of a moving body with an image of an actual or imaginary converging point of a lane of a running path for the moving body being at a center of an image frame, comprising: an image forming section for forming a two dimensional image of the front scene of the moving body with the image of the actual or imaginary converging point of the lane of the running path for the moving body being at the center of the image frame on a image plane, wherein the image forming section includes a distortion lens having a characteristic of forming an image, with a height of the image being larger in a central area and smaller in a peripheral area so as to allow the central area of the image to have a high resolution; an image sensor for photo-electrically converting the two dimensional image into electric image data; a speed sensor for detecting a running speed of the moving body; a zoom ratio determining section for determining a zoom ratio in accordance with the detected running speed; an image sensor driving section for driving the image sensor to change the photo-electrically converted area of the two dimensional image in accordance with the determined zoom ratio; an image enlarging section for processing the image data to enlarge the image of the converted area with the zoom ratio determined by the zoom ratio, wherein the image data is obtained by photo-electrically converting only an area determined in accordance with the zoom ratio in an effective image area, and the two dimensional image of the front scene is formed in an entire area of the effective image area in the image sensor; and a display for displaying the image of the area enlarged by the image enlarging section.