Patent ID: 6995786

Claim:
An electronic endoscope comprising: an image pickup element that captures an image of an illuminated object under observation; a circuit that carries out image processing for displaying a moving image or a still image; a timing generator that generates a first reference signal at a standard speed and a second reference signal at a speed doubling the speed of this first reference signal or faster; an image pickup element drive circuit that reads a signal for forming a moving image from said image pickup element based on said first reference signal at the standard speed and reads all pixel signals obtained by exposure within a 1 vertical scanning period to form a still image based on said second reference signal at a speed doubling the speed of the standard speed or faster; a memory to store the still image signal obtained by said image pickup element; and a control circuit that performs control so that said still image signal is written into this memory at a speed doubling the speed of the standard speed or faster and then this still image signal is read at the standard speed.