Patent ID: 8721532

Claim:
An endoscope apparatus comprising: a light source portion including light sources that irradiate living tissue with an excitation light for generating fluorescence and a reference light for generating a reflected light alternately; an image pickup portion including image pickup devices having a predetermined number of pixels for picking up images of the fluorescence generated by the irradiation of the living tissue with the excitation light and a reflected light of the reference light reflected by the living tissue; a signal processing portion that generates image signals from signals picked up by the image pickup portion; a light quantity ratio setting portion that sets a light quantity ratio between the excitation light and the reference light; an addition processing portion that generates, from fluorescence signals obtained when the image of the fluorescence is picked up or the image signals of the fluorescence generated by the signal processing portion, addition processed signals of fluorescence in which a plurality of adjacent pixels are added; a light quantity control portion that, when the addition processed signals are generated by the addition processing portion, reduces a driving current for excitation light in the light source portion according to the number of addition processed pixels, generates a light adjusting signal on the basis of brightnesses of the addition processed signals of the fluorescence and reflected light signals as the image signals of the reflected light, and controls a quantity of at least one of the excitation light and the reference light so as to maintain a predetermined light quantity ratio between the excitation light and the reference light set by the light quantity ratio setting portion on the basis of the light adjusting signal; and a superimposition processing portion that outputs, to a display portion, superimposed image signals in which the addition processed signals of the fluorescence and the reflected light signals are superimposed, with the predetermined light quantity ratio being maintained in the light quantity control portion.