Patent ID: 8432439

Claim:
An endoscope apparatus that is operable in a plurality of operation modes, the apparatus comprising: an endoscope that generates an image signal of a subject; an image signal processing portion that processes the image signal to generate image data; a display signal generating portion that generates a display signal for displaying an image based on the image data, and a character input screen; an operation portion that is operable to input a character via the character input screen; a character string storage portion that stores character strings such that the character strings are correlated with respective ones of the plurality of operation modes; a mode information storage portion that stores mode information corresponding to a currently-set operation mode to which the apparatus is currently set from among the plurality of operation modes in which the apparatus is operable; a reading portion that reads the stored mode information, which corresponds to the currently-set operation mode, from the mode information storage portion, and, in accordance with the read mode information, reads a character string, which corresponds to the currently-set operation mode corresponding to the read mode information, from the character string storage portion; and a control portion that (i) controls the display signal generating portion to display on the character input screen a component for selecting the character string read by the reading portion, (ii) controls the display signal generating portion to display the character string corresponding to the component when an operation of the component is detected, (iii) associates the character string selected via the character input screen with the image data, and (iv) records the image data and the selected character string in a recording medium.