Electronic endoscope system for estimating and producing spectral image of arbitrary wavelength band from image signals captured under general illumination light and those captured under specific illumination light

Abstract

An illuminator of an electronic endoscope system is provided with a light emission mechanism that consists of a light source emitting white light as general illumination light and an optical chopper that turns a disc at a revolution speed in front of the light source. The disc consists of transparent glass sectors and filter sectors. Each time the general illumination light passes through the filter sectors, the illuminator emits specific illumination light having different spectral characteristics from those of the general illumination light, so a CCD outputs two kinds of image signals under the general illumination light and the specific illumination light. A spectral image producer produces a spectral image of arbitrary wavelength bands from the two kinds of image signals, whereas a general image producer produces a general image from those image signals captured under the general illumination light.