Patent ID: 7248403

Claim:
A microscopic image capture apparatus for capturing a sample image of a sample, said apparatus comprising: a macro capture device for collectively capturing an entire area of a slide glass; a macro image information dividing device for dividing image information on the slide glass obtained by the macro capture device 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 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 the sample image exclusion section and not captured by the high-magnification image capture device, can be correctly maintained.