Patent ID: 7209243

Claim:
An illumination device comprising: a light source; an optical fiber bundle; a coupling-in optical system which couples the light of said light source into a first end of said fiber bundle, wherein the coupling-in optical system has a large numerical entrance aperture; a coupling-out optical system which couples out the light emerging from each fiber of the optical fiber bundle at a second end of said optical fiber bundle, the light emerging from the fibers retaining an inhomogeneous intensity distribution of light corresponding to the inhomogeneous distribution created at the entry of the light into the fibers at the first end of the optical fiber bundle; an illuminating optical system which illuminates an image field; and a homogenizing optical system which is arranged between said coupling-out optical system and said illuminating optical system, wherein said homogenizing optical system homogenizes a nonuniform intensity distribution in the image field of the light emerging from said optical fiber bundle, and wherein homogenization occurs only in an intermediate image plane, and this homogenization is performed only by the homogenizing optical system.