Patent ID: 7072120

Claim:
An image pick-up apparatus comprising: an object lens for projecting an image of an object to be picked-up; an image transmission device having an image-receiving side disposed to receive the image projected by said object lens, an image output side, and an image-transmitting portion coupled optically with said image-receiving side and said image output side, said image-receiving side having a curvature corresponding to curvature-of-field characteristics of said object lens so as to enable correction of aberrations introduced by said object lens into the image projected by said object lens, said image transmission device including a bundle of light guide components, each of which is an optical fiber, and has opposite first and second ends and a wall section that extends between said first and second ends, said first ends of said light guide components being contoured such that said first ends of said light guide components cooperate to form said image-receiving side of said image transmission device, said second ends of said light guide components cooperating to form said image output side of said image transmission device, said wall sections of said light guide components cooperating to form said image-transmitting portion of said image transmission device; and an image-sensing device coupled optically with said image output side of said image transmission device for sensing a corrected image of the object to be picked-up that is provided by said image transmission device at said image output side.