Patent ID: 8758234

Claim:
An endoscope, comprising: an optical system, the optical system including a wide angle lens system and an image transmission system, the wide angle lens system having an optical axis that is angularly offset from a longitudinal axis of the endoscope such that the optical axis resides at an angle greater than zero degrees to the longitudinal axis, wherein the wide angle lens system simultaneously gathers light rays from an endoscopic image field, the endoscopic image field at least spanning the longitudinal axis and an angle greater than ninety degrees to the longitudinal axis; an imager comprising an imaging surface area that receives only a portion of an endoscopic image transmitted by the wide angle lens system and produces output signals corresponding to the endoscopic image field; and image forming circuitry that receives the output signal and produces an image signal, wherein the image transmission system resides in an image path between the wide angle lens system and the imager, the image transmission system having at least one lens that alters the distribution of the endoscopic image field to correspond to the imaging surface area such that the distribution of the endoscopic image field on the imaging surface area has a uniform information, wherein the at least one lens distributes substantially the entire endoscopic image field in the longitudinal direction to correspond to the imaging surface area, and wherein the optical system provides for f-sin(theta) type distortion.