Richard Wolf Gmbh

Michael Voegele

Felix Ams

Ulrich Haefele

Ulrich Osterland

Holger Widmann

A focussing and focal length adjusting device for an optical lens system in the camera head of an endoscope. This device includes a focussing device which has several piezoelectric bending actuators attached along and symmetrically to the optical axis of the focussing lens. The piezoelectric bending actuators are via in each case one joint member connected to a sleeve encompassing the focussing lens in a manner such that with voltage impingement bending movements carried out by the bending actuators are converted into a linear focussing movement for the focussing lens. Furthermore a zoom drive adjusting the focal length of a zoom lens system includes a stepper motor whose stepped rotation via a grooved roller and a pin linearly moved by the helical groove of this roller is converted into a linear movement of a zoom lens sleeve for the focal length adjustment. The activation of the stepper motor for the zoom operation, and the production of the focus adjusting signal for the piezoelectric actuators of the focussing device are effected during the vertical blanking interval of the video signal, this interval being extracted by an extraction circuit from the video signal and being led to a respective focussing circuit and a zoom control circuit in the form of a time window.

Focussing and focal length adjusting device for a video camera

An electronic endoscope with a picture sensor located at its distal end and with several illumination units (LEDs) integrated in the endoscope, for producing illumination light irradiated at the distal endoscope end. The illumination units are arranged as a linear and axial array of LEDs in a space, of an enveloping tube, connecting proximally to the picture sensor. To the LEDs there are allocated fiber-optics into which the light irradiated by the LEDs may be coupled. The fiber-optics run up to the distal endoscope end and here are grouped together to a bundle.

Electronic endoscope

A video endoscope having a semiconductor image converter which is incorporated in the endoscope and which receives the image of the object illuminated periodically by an illumination device with a sequence of partial colors, for example by using a filter wheel, and converts same into video signal components which correspond to partial color separations of the image and which are read successively and selectively separated according to partial colors into an intermediate store and are then read out simultaneously for the formation of an individual image and are processed for the representation of the image into television-compatible video signals, in which the lamp of the illumination device is pulsed with variable pulse amplitudes. The pulsed operation of the lamp is a function of the number of partial colors to be generated with an even-numbered multiple of the image repetition frequency, in which respect the light flux of the light pulses emitted by the lamp is variable as a function of the actual value of the respective amplitudes of the video signals, in order, in a predetermined range of regulations, to bring the actual value to a desired value. Arranged in the beam path of the lamp is an optical regulating element which undertakes a further regulation of the light intensity outside of the range of regulation.

Growing community of inventors

Kaempfelbach-Ersingen, Germany

Michael Voegele