Patent ID: 7662095

Claim:
An endoscope for lighting and observing object fields in cavities, with a lighting unit and an elongated endoscopic image transmitting system to which are assigned on the distal side an optical lens and on the proximal side an optical eyepiece or a filming unit as an observation system, which on the proximal side contains an optical dividing element which is inserted between the lighting unit, the elongated image transmitting system and the observation system such that the observation light produced by the lighting unit can be coupled into the elongated image transmitting system, the optical dividing element being designed, with respect to reflection and transmission, for mutually complementary light polarizations, characterized in that on the distal side a quarter-wave plate is connected distal of the optical lens and further characterized in that an additional fiberoptic lighting system is provided to illuminate the cavity in white light and on the proximal side between the image transmitting system and the dividing element a neutral divider is inserted to separate a part of the returning light for an additional observation.