Patent ID: 7016109

Claim:
A microscopic image capture apparatus for capturing a sample image of a sample, said apparatus comprising: a low-magnification dividing device for dividing an entire area of a slide glass on a stage into field size sections of a predetermined low-powered objective lens; a transfer device for relatively transferring the slide glass on the stage in a direction perpendicular to an optical axis of the low-powered objective lens by relatively transferring the stage with respect to the objective lens; an image information obtaining device for obtaining image information for each of the field size sections each time the entire area of the slide glass is transferred by the transfer device sequentially through the field size sections of the slide glass; a high-magnification dividing device for dividing the obtained image information for each field size section into high-magnification size sections corresponding to a magnification of a predetermined high-powered objective lens; a sample image discrimination device for checking each of the high-magnification size sections to determine whether there is sample image information of the sample in the obtained image information for each of the high-magnification size sections, and for discriminating (i) each high-magnification size section including the sample image information as a sample image inclusion section, and (ii) each high-magnification size section including no sample image information as a sample image exclusion section; a high-magnification image capture device for capturing high-magnification image information using the predetermined high-powered objective lens only for each said high-magnification size section discriminated as the sample image inclusion section; and an image information generation device for generating high-magnification composite image information about the sample on the slide glass by generating a high-magnification image such that a relative position between (i) an area of the high-magnification image corresponding to the high-magnification image information obtained by the high-magnification image capture device and (ii) an area of the high-magnification image corresponding to each said high-magnification size section discriminated as a sample image exclusion section and not captured by the high-magnification image capture device, can be correctly maintained.