Patent ID: 7598972

Claim:
An optical scanning device, comprising: a plurality of light-beam emitting units each of which emitting a light beam; a deflecting unit that deflects the light beam emitted by each of the light-beam emitting units independently to scan surfaces of different bodies to be scanned; and a plurality of light-receiving units each receiving the plurality of deflected light beams at a predetermined position in a direction of the deflection, wherein the plurality of deflected light beams are emitted from different light-beam emitting units and are incident on one light-receiving unit, an incident angle of the plurality of deflected light beams on a light-receiving surface of the one light-receiving unit is set to be identical in a scanning surface formed by the beam scanned by the deflection unit, each of the plurality of deflected light beams scans the surfaces of corresponding different bodies to be scanned, each of the plurality of deflected light beams is, in a main-scanning surface, incident into the light-receiving unit with an angle of 90 degrees and is incident on a same straight line, and the plurality of light beams are, in a sub-scanning surface, incident into the light-receiving unit parallel to each other.