Patent ID: 7995093

Claim:
An endoscope apparatus comprising: an endoscope comprising an imaging device that forms color image signals of a body to be observed; and a processor unit comprising an image signal processing circuit, wherein the endoscope is connected to the processor unit in a freely attachable and detachable way, the apparatus comprising: a spectral image forming circuit that conducts matrix calculation based on a color image signal obtained by the imaging device and forms a spectral image of an arbitrarily selected wavelength range, the spectral image forming circuit being arranged on the processor unit; a characteristics information retaining/generating portion having endoscopic characteristics identification information influencing formation of the spectral image, wherein the endoscopic characteristics identification information includes information on at least one of types of color filters of the imaging device and spectral characteristics of the color filters, the characteristics information retaining/generating portion being arranged on the endoscope; a characteristics information obtaining portion that obtains the endoscopic characteristics identification information at the characteristics information generating portion, the characteristics information obtaining portion being arranged on the processor unit; a storage portion that stores a plurality of matrix data for forming a spectral image corresponding to the endoscopic characteristics identification information; and a control portion that reads corresponding matrix data from the storage portion based on the endoscopic characteristics identification information obtained at the characteristics information obtaining portion and allows the spectral image forming circuit to conduct matrix calculation according to the read matrix calculation data; wherein the characteristics information obtaining portion obtains information on types of light sources for emitting light illumination from the endoscope end part and selects matrix data according to a type of the light source by referring to a memory unit which stores the information of the types of the light sources by the control portion and which is arranged in the processor unit.