Patent ID: 8734333

Claim:
An endoscope system comprising: an imaging device for imaging a site of interest and outputting an image signal, said image device outputting no image signal in a vertical blanking interval; a light source device for interchangeably emitting a first and a second illumination light including different spectral characteristics at charge-storage time intervals of said imaging device; a dynamically reconfigurable processor including a reconfigurable region to be reconfigured between a first image producing circuit for processing said image signal obtained under said first illumination light to produce a first image and a second image producing circuit for processing said image signal obtained under said second illumination light to produce a second image, wherein reconfiguration of said reconfigurable region is performed in synchronization with interchange of said illumination light; a configuration memory for storing circuit information for configuring said first image producing circuit and circuit information for configuring said second image producing circuit; a display device for displaying said first and second images side-by-side; and a reconfiguration controller for determining a timing of said reconfiguration, wherein said reconfiguration controller gains access to said dynamically reconfigurable processor upon detecting said vertical blanking interval, and causes said dynamically reconfigurable processor to load said circuit information for configuring said first image producing circuit or said circuit information for configuring said second image producing circuit from said configuration memory in said vertical blanking interval, so as to reconfigure said reconfigurable region from said first image producing circuit to said second image producing circuit or from said second image producing circuit to said first image producing circuit.