Patent ID: 8265362

Claim:
A pathological tissue image capturing system comprising: a pathological image acquirer for capturing a pathological tissue image; an output device for outputting said pathological tissue image; a weighting device for detecting a ROI from said pathological tissue image and adding a weight to pixels positioned in the ROI; and a range selector for selecting an enlarged image capturing range in which to capture said pathological tissue image at an enlarged scale based on the weight added by said weighting device; wherein said pathological image acquirer captures an enlarged pathological tissue image in the enlarged image capturing range selected by said range selector; said output device outputs the captured enlarged pathological tissue image in the enlarged image capturing range; and wherein: said pathological image acquirer captures said pathological tissue image at such a magnification that an entire tissue sample on a pathological tissue slide is included in a microscopic field of vision; said weighing device calculates, for each pixel in said pathological tissue image, densities of cell nuclei contained in the prescribed range around the pixel, and adds values representing the calculated densities of cell nuclei, as a weight to the pixel; and said range selector selects, from among the pixels, a pixel to which a maximum weight has been added by said weighing device, and selects the prescribed range around the selected pixel as said enlarged image capturing range.