Patent ID: 8182420

Claim:
An endoscope image pick-up apparatus comprising: an image pick-up unit for insertion into the body; an extra-corporeal unit for receiving an image captured by the image pick-up unit by radio transmission, the extra-corporeal unit being arranged outside the body; an image pick-up device for picking up an image in the body, the image pick-up device being provided in the image pick-up unit: a data transmitting device for transmitting the image picked up by the image pick-up device to the extra-corporeal unit at a plurality of transmitting ratios, the data transmitting device being provided in the image pick-up unit; a characteristic amount detecting device for detecting a predetermined amount of characteristics regarding presence or absence of an affected part or a similar matter of the affected part based on the image picked up, the characteristic amount detecting device being provided in the image pick-up unit; a determining device for determining validity of the image; an invalidity determining device for determining whether the image is invalid or valid based on a characteristic amount regarding invalidity of the image by presence of white compression or black compression in the image, or no change in image; and a target image determining device for determining whether or not the image is a target image including the affected part or the similar matter of the affected part based on an output from the characteristic amount detecting device, wherein the determining device determines the image validity at a plurality of stages based on a combination of determining results of the invalidity determining device and the target image determining device, and the data transmitting device controls the data transmitting ratio in accordance with a determining result outputted by the determining device.