Olympus Optical Company, Ltd.

Yoshihiro Kosaka

Takashi Fukaya

Hideyuki Adachi

Kuniaki Kami

Eiichi Fuse

Seiji Yamaguchi

Masakazu Nakamura

Michio Sato

Yasundo Tanaka

Kiyotaka Matsuno

Koichi Umeyama

Katsuya Suzuki

Masakazu Gotanda

Susumu Takahashi

Yutaka Takahashi

Shinji Yamashita

Katsuyuki Saito

Hiroki Hibino

Hitoshi Mizuno

Masaaki Hayashi

Kazunari Nakamura

Kenji Yoshino

Akinobu Uchikubo

Tomohisa Sakurai

Sakae Takehana

Hitoshi Karasawa

Tetsumaru Kubota

Takehiro Nakagawa

Masao Uehara

Hiromasa Suzuki

Yoshinao Oaki

Mamoru Kaneko

Koichi Matsui

Koji Yasunaga

Akihiro Taguchi

Tatsuya Kubota

Akira Murata

Ichiro Nakamura

Nobuyuki Sakamoto

Koji Koda

Masanori Kaneda

Masaya Yoshihara

Akihiro Miyashita

Kazuo Sonobe

Shouichi Ieoka

Kazutada Kobayashi

Kyo Imagawa

Koji Tanikawa

Shuichi Takayam

An apparatus for holding a medical instrument, such as an endoscope, in place without exerting an undue force on an insertion hole in an abdominal cavity of a subject even when the arm of a scope-holding section is unlocked, includes a four-link parallelogram mechanism. The four-link parallelogram mechanism includes a support arm for supporting a treating tool, an arm section parallel to the support arm and upper and lower arm sections connected to the upper and lower end sides of the support arm and arm section in a parallel relation. A support mechanism supports the arm sections of the four-link parallelogram mechanism to allow the arm sections to be moved in left/right and up/down directions, while being rotated, so that a straight line connecting an intersecting point P of a center line of the treating instrument inserted into an insertion hole in an abdominal wall of a subject and the center of the insertion hole to spherical bearings of the arm is set parallel to the upper and lower arm sections.

Apparatus for holding a medical instrument in place

An endoscope system includes a movement detector for detecting an operator's movement, a signal processor for processing a signal the detector detects, and a control for controlling drive which drives a medical device according to an output signal of the signal processor. The endoscope system bends a bending section of an endoscope serving as a medical device according to the operator's movement, and thus orients the observation field of view to a direction the operator intends or controls the movement of a treatment adapter serving as a medical device. The endoscope system includes a superimposing means for superimposing an image associated with the operator's movement onto an image acquired by an imaging device associated with the endoscope system.

Endoscope system with automatic control according to movement of an

A medical system has a detecting device for detecting three dimensional image information about a living body, a signal processing circuit for processing the image signal transmitted from the detecting device, and an object information reproduction device. The object information reproduction device comprises a movable displacement element which is touched by the operator and acts according to the output from the signal processing circuit so as to cause the operator to tactually sense information about the object. Thus, the operator is able to recognize the degree of unevenness in a tactile manner by touching the displacement element. Other embodiments include means for sensing and reproducing hardness and temperature of the object.

Medical system having object information reproduction means for palpation

A medical system according to the present invention comprises a medical apparatus including an operation unit manipulated by a surgeon and a treatment section formed away from the operation unit for treating a subject, a detector or a pressure sensor for detecting a state of contact between the subject and the treatment section, and a reproduction mechanism for amplifying a small contact pressure according to the output of the detector and thus reproduce the state of contact so that the surgeon can perceive the state of contact.

Medical system for reproducing a state of contact of the treatment

A photo-pulse from a photo-pulse generating apparatus is branched, where one branch is radiated to an examined body and the reflected light reflected within the examined body is delayed in time in proportion to the depth from the surface of the examined body and is led to a time-analyzing reflected light measuring apparatus. In this measuring apparatus, the other branched reference photo-pulse or reference signal pulse is input as delayed by the time for which the photo-pulse reflected within the examined body returns and only the reflected light component synchronized with the entering timing of this reference light pulse is analyzed in the time and is detected. By varying the detection sensitivity of this measuring apparatus in response to the depth from the surface of the examined body, the interior can be observed.

Examined body interior information observing apparatus by using

A cavity insert device comprising an insert section capable of being inserted into tracts and cavities, a detection circuit for detecting conditions of components making up the device, such as an observation device formed at the distal end side of the insert section, and a fuzzy inference section for synthetically determining a plurality of information signals outputted from the detection circuit and producing control signals to control the components. The fuzzy inference section employs inference rules which are empirically considered to be desirable, and control is made by the control signals obtained with the fuzzy inference. The device is thus operated in a nearly optimum state.

Cavity insert device using fuzzy theory

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Hachioji, Japan

Yoshihiro Kosaka