Patent ID: 7250963

Claim:
A microscopic image capture apparatus, comprising: a slide glass transfer unit which transfers a slide glass from a first slide glass tray unit to a space under a microscope objective lens having a high magnification; a wide field-of-view image capture unit which includes a linear image sensor and an objective lens having a low magnification, and which generates a wide field-of-view image of the entire slide glass in synchronization with the transfer of the slide glass by sequentially capturing linear images of the slide glass; a microscopic image capture unit which: (i) automatically recognizes a position of a sample on the slide glass based on the wide field-of-view image of the entire slide glass the wide fiel-of-view image capture unit, (ii) divides an entire capture area of the sample into a plurality of sections, and (iii) captures a microscopic image of each of the sections using the microscope objective lens having the high magnification, so as to a capture microscopic image of the sample; and a slide glass storage unit which stores the slide glass from the space under the microscope objective lens into a second slide glass tray unit after the microscopic image of the sample on the slide glass has been captured by the microscopic image capture unit.