Patent ID: 8654223

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus comprising: a stage part on which an object to be observed is placed; an image sensor unit including an optical system that forms an optical image of the object placed on the stage part and plural image sensors each of which captures part of the optical image; a drive mechanism configured to relatively move the stage part and the image sensor unit; and a processing part configured to (a) cause the image sensor unit to perform plural image capturing operations with causing the drive mechanism to relatively move the stage part and the image sensor unit after each image capturing operation by a predetermined movement amount in a predetermined movement direction, and (b) combine captured images obtained through the plural image capturing operations with each other to produce a whole image that covers a whole image capturing area including the whole object, wherein the plural image sensors are arranged so as to form odd numbers of rows in the predetermined movement direction, wherein numbers of the image sensors respectively included in two rows adjacent to each other in the odd numbers of rows are mutually different, and a number of the image sensors included in each of end rows in the odd numbers of rows is fewer than that of the image sensors included in each row adjacent to each end row, and wherein the following condition is satisfied: (−¼)× x 2 ×{St ( T x −1)+1 }−y 2 ×( T y −1)>0 where T x represents a number of the image sensors in the predetermined movement direction, T y represents a number of the image sensors in a direction orthogonal to the predetermined movement direction, and St represents a value obtained by dividing the predetermined movement amount by x.