Patent ID: 7853106

Claim:
An endoscope system comprising: an electric scope comprising a light guide; and a light source apparatus that has a light source and a light control apparatus; said light control apparatus adjusting a quantity of light that is incident to said electric scope, based on a comparison between a scope characteristic that indicates a relative value of the maximum quantity of light permitted to be incident to said electric scope from said light source, and a light source total characteristic that indicates a relative value of the quantity of the light radiated from said light source to said electric scope, said light source total characteristic being a calculated value that is independent of an object viewed by the electric scope, wherein the scope characteristic is set to a value so as to prevent at least one of damage to an incident end of the light guide, and infection due to excessive light illumination, said light source total characteristic is a product of a lamp characteristic, a combination characteristic, and a thermal characteristic, said lamp characteristic indicates a change in the quantity of light emitted from said light source during a time of use and indicates the variability in the quantity of radiated light among the same kind of said light source; said combination characteristic indicates a transmitting efficiency of the quantity of light based on a combination of said light source apparatus and said electric scope connected to said light source apparatus; and said thermal characteristic indicates the degree to which the effect the light radiated from said light source apparatus influences the temperature of said electric scope as heat.