Patent ID: 7892169

Claim:
An endoscope device, comprising: illumination light generating means for generating illumination light for irradiating a subject; an endoscope having image-pickup means for capturing an image of said subject by return light from the subject; band restricting means provided on an optical path from said illumination light generating means to said image-pickup means for restricting at least one of the plurality of wavelength regions of said illumination light based on penetration depths of light with respect to the subject for irradiating illumination light of a band with a discrete spectral distribution to said subject and for performing image formation of a band image by return light of the illumination light with the spectral distribution from different depths of tissue layers of said subject on said image-pickup means, said band restricting means comprising: a first filter set having a plurality of wide-band filters, each wide-band filter being disposed for allowing transmission of a wide band of wavelengths, said wide band of wavelengths of said each wide-band filter being substantially overlapping with respect to said wide band of wavelengths of at least one other wide-band filter of said plurality of wide-band filters; a second filter set having a plurality of narrow-band filters, each narrow-band filter being disposed for allowing transmission of light of a narrow band of wavelengths, a transmission band of wavelengths of said each narrow-band filter being discretely restricted with respect to transmission bands of wavelengths of other narrow-band filters, and one of the plurality of narrow-band filters including a specific wavelength bandwidth with a full width at half maximum of 20 to 40 nm; and signal processing means for processing signals outputted from said image-pickup means in order to display an observation image of the subject based on a band image of a discrete spectral distribution of said subject formed on said image-pickup means, wherein the second filter set includes a first narrow-band filter having a transmission band including 420 nm, and a second narrow-band filter having a transmission band including 540 nm and of a full width at half maximum of 20-40 nm.