Patent ID: 7324674

Claim:
An image processing device for fluorescence observation comprising: a changeover filter located in an optical path of a light beam generated by a light source device and impinging on body tissue, said light beam including a spectra from an infrared wavelength band to a visible light band, said changeover filter alters said light beam into illumination light or excitation light; an image synthesizing section that generates a synthesized image by synthesizing an image signal of a reflected light image sensed by an image pickup element and obtained by illuminating body tissue with said illumination light and an image signal of a fluorescent image sensed by said image pickup element and obtained by illuminating said body tissue with said excitation light, wherein said body tissue is sequentially and non-concurrently illuminated by said illumination light and said excitation light; and a gain adjustment section that adjusts a gain of said image signal of said reflected light image and/or said image signal of said fluorescent image such that a boundary of hues of normal tissue and diseased tissue found using optical characteristics of said normal tissue and said diseased tissue is included in a predetermined range with respect to a prescribed standard chromaticity diagram, depending on whether said body tissue that is represented in said synthesized image generated by said image synthesizing section is normal tissue or diseased tissue.