Patent ID: 8500632

Claim:
An endoscope apparatus comprising: an endoscope including: an elongated insertion portion including a distal end portion provided with an illumination window and an observation window; an objective optical system mounted on the observation window; a single solid-state image sensing device having an image pickup face disposed at an image forming position of the objective optical system; and a filter portion disposed in the vicinity of the image pickup face of the solid-state image sensing device, the filter portion including: a first filter including three or more wideband filters each having a wideband wavelength transmission characteristic; and a second filter having a narrowband wavelength transmission characteristic in a visible band which is narrower than the wideband wavelength transmission characteristics of the wideband filters, wherein the at least three or more wideband filters are capable of separating colors into three primary colors under illumination of white light to cover the visible band, and the first filter and the second filter are arranged at an interval on a same two-dimensional plane; and signal processing means including: a normal image generation portion including a color signal extraction portion for extracting color signals picked up through the three or more wideband filters constituting the first filter with respect to an outputted signal of the solid-state image sensing device captured under the illumination of the white light, and generating a color normal image signal in the visible band from the color signals extracted by the color signal extraction portion; a narrowband image generation portion for generating a narrowband image signal in the visible band while selectively performing color adjustment based on a signal picked up through the second filter with respect to the outputted signal of the solid-state image sensing device captured under the illumination of the white light during a same illumination period as when the color normal image signal is generated; and an output selection portion for at least simultaneously outputting the color normal image signal generated by the normal image generation portion and the narrowband image signal generated by the narrowband image generation portion.