Patent ID: 7101334

Claim:
An optical observation device for observing 3-D images of an endoscope, said optical observation device comprising: an image input means having a rod-shaped front part witH a sufficiently small diameter for insertion within a living human being, the rod-shaped front part containing a front optical system having two separate light paths for capturing images having parallax in a direction that includes a component in the longitudinal direction of the rod-shaped front part; and a relay optical system; wherein said two separate light paths are obliquely or perpendicularly arranged relative to the longitudinal direction of the rod-shaped front part so that said two senarate light paths are not parallel to the longitudinal direction of the rod-shaped front part, and are combined by a separation surface into one light path which passes through the relay optical system; an image conversion means for changing the parallax direction of images received from the image input means so as to form converted images; a 3-D image observation means for enabling the 3-D observation of the converted images; and the image conversion means changes the parallax direction by (a) using pattern matching, calculating a position shift map in a certain 3-D coordinate system of right and left images captured by the front optical system; (b) calculating an object point by using 3-D coordinates of two points that correspond to one object in the position shift map; and (c) projecting the object point onto two points that are positioned on a line that lies in a different direction of the line formed by connecting the two corresponding points.