Endoscope device

Abstract

An endoscope device obtains tissue information of a desired depth near the tissue surface. A xenon lamp ( 11 ) in a light source ( 4 ) emits illumination light. A diaphragm ( 13 ) controls a quantity of the light that reaches a rotating filter. The rotating filter has an outer sector with a first filter set, and an inner sector with a second filter set. The first filter set outputs frame sequence light having overlapping spectral properties suitable for color reproduction, while the second filter set outputs narrow-band frame sequence light having discrete spectral properties enabling extraction of desired deep tissue information. A condenser lens ( 16 ) collects the frame sequence light coming through the rotating filter onto the incident face of a light guide ( 15 ). The diaphragm controls the amount of the light reaching the filter depending on which filter set is selected.

1 . An endoscope device, comprising:
 an illumination light supplying section for supplying illumination light including a visible light region;   an endoscope having image-pickup section for irradiating the illumination light on a subject and picking up an image of the subject by return light;   a signal processing section for signal processing image-pickup signals from the image-pickup section; and   a band restricting section for restricting to narrow a band of at least one of a plurality of wavelength regions of the illumination light and performing image formation of a band image of a discrete spectral distribution of the subject on the image-pickup section, the band restricting section being disposed to be arrangeable on an optical path from the illumination light supplying section to the image-pickup section,   wherein the signal processing section performs spatial frequency filtering processing for each of wavelength regions of the image-pickup signals with the band of the at least one wavelength region narrowed by the band restricting section.   
     
     
         2 . The endoscope device according to  claim 1 , wherein the illumination light supplying unit comprises a light quantity control unit for controlling the quantity of light of the illumination light for each of the wavelength regions, according to restriction by the band restricting unit.