JPH05264907A - Endoscope - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Abstract] [Purpose] To provide an endoscope with good operability by enabling observation of a long-distance image and a short-distance image at the same time. [Structure] The insertion portion 1 of the endoscope shown in FIG. 1A has two image guides and a light guide, and is divided into an image guide lead 2 and a light guide lead 3 at a branch portion 4. The tip of the insertion portion 1 is located at the tip of the image guide as shown in FIG.
a and 7b are provided, a light guide 8 is arranged around them, and they are integrated by a tube 9. The image receiving end 5 of the image guide 2 has two image guide ends 10a and 10b fixed to one base 11 as shown in FIG.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an endoscope used for medical and industrial purposes.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art An endoscope is used for medical purposes, for example, to insert it into a body cavity of a patient and observe the inside. Further, for industrial use, it is used for visual inspection inside thin tubes and inside products.

A conventional endoscope will be described. Figure 4
It is explanatory drawing of the conventional endoscope. In the figure, 21 is an insertion portion, 2
2 is an image guide lead portion, 23 is a write guide lead portion, 24 is a branch portion, 25 is an image receiving end, 26 is a light transmitting end, 2
7 is a lens, 28 is a light guide, 29 is a tube, 3
Reference numeral 0 is an image guide, 31 is a base, and 32 is an eyepiece.

FIG. 4A is an overall view of a conventional endoscope. The insertion portion 21 is branched into an image guide lead portion 22 and a write guide lead portion 23 at the branch portion 4. The tip of the branched image guide lead portion 22 becomes the image receiving end 25, and the write guide lead portion 23
Has a light transmitting end 26 at its tip.

The image guide passes from the vicinity of the tip of the insertion portion 21, passes through the insertion portion 1, is separated from the light guide at the branch portion 24, extends through the image guide lead portion 22 to the image receiving end 25, and the image receiving end 25. At base 31
It is fixed by. The light guide extends from the tip of the insertion portion 21 through the insertion portion 21, is separated from the image guide at the branch portion 24, passes through the light guide lead 23, and extends to the light transmitting end 26.

FIG. 4B is an enlarged view of the end face of the insertion portion 21, and FIG. 4C is an enlarged view of the image receiving end 25. At the tip of the insertion portion 21, the image guide 30 has a lens 27 attached to the tip thereof, the lens 27 having an outer diameter similar to that of the image guide 30. A plurality of light guides 28 for illumination are concentrically arranged around it. The outer side is surrounded and protected by a thin tube 29.

The operation of the conventional endoscope will be described with reference to FIG. Illumination light from a light source (not shown) enters the light transmitting end 26 and is emitted from the tip of the insertion portion 21 through the light guide 28 to illuminate the object to be observed. The reflected light from the object to be observed is sent to the image receiving end 25 through the lens 7 at the tip of the insertion portion 21 and the image guide 30. The reflected light that has been sent is appropriately magnified using the eyepiece lens 32 or the like, and the user observes it as an image.

In a conventional endoscope, particularly an endoscope called an extra-fine diameter endoscope, a quartz image guide is used as the image guide 30. The silica-based image guide is an image transmission fiber in which 1,000 to 10,000 pixel fibers are fused and integrated in a silica glass fiber having an outer diameter of about 0.1 to 0.5 mm. As the lens 27 attached to the tip, an outer diameter similar to that of the image guide 30 such as SELFOC lens (registered trademark) is used. The light guide 28 for illumination uses a plurality of fibers having an outer shape of 20 to 50 μm. Also, as the tube 9,
Thin-walled tubes such as polyimide tubes and Teflon tubes are used. Using such materials, 0.2
An endoscope having an outer diameter of about 2 mm has been put into practical use, and is also called an extra-fine diameter endoscope.

An ultra-fine diameter endoscope can be inserted into a body cavity such as a blood vessel, bile duct, fallopian tube, joint, tooth root, or ear canal of a human body through a catheter, and can observe a minute inside. As described above, in order to reduce the burden on the patient as well as to enlarge the site to be examined, it is desirable for the endoscope to be inserted into the body cavity to have a small diameter, and it is necessary to make the outer diameter as small as possible.

For this reason, the lens 7 used has a limited outer diameter, and is approximately the same diameter as the image guide.
There is no choice but to limit it to about 5 times. With such a small-diameter lens, there is no need to adjust the focus by distance like a general camera lens, and a fixed-focus lens such as a SELFOC lens is inevitably used.

When the endoscope is used, the insertion portion 1 is inserted into a minute body cavity and the operation is performed to search for an affected area while observing an image. In many cases, the wall of the body cavity or a foreign object is at the end of the endoscope. It often comes near, and when using a fixed focus lens, it often happens that the lens is out of focus. For the above SELFOC lens, the optimum focus distance is 5
Although a lens with a visual field of about 2 to 20 mm is commercially available, the wall of a body cavity or a foreign object often comes closer than 2 mm, for example, and it becomes out of focus. When it is out of focus, you do not know what the endoscope is showing, it takes time to operate, and the detection of the affected area is delayed,
It puts a strain on the patient. Also, the optimum focus distance is 2
When a lens of mm or less is used, it is possible to observe the wall of the body cavity, etc., which is close to the lens.

On the other hand, an image fiber in which a plurality of image guides are housed in one cable is described in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 56-158307. However, in this image fiber, one image guide is composed of a plurality of image fibers and one image is transmitted. As in the present invention, a plurality of images are respectively separated by a plurality of image guides. It does not disclose the technology of transmission.

[0013]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems, and it is possible to observe a plurality of images, for example, a long-distance image and a short-distance image at the same time. It is intended to provide an endoscope with good operability.

[0014]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided an image guide with a plurality of lenses,
In an endoscope in which a light guide for illumination is protected and integrated by a thin tube, at least two image guides have image receiving ends fixed to the same base.

The invention according to claim 2 is characterized in that, in the endoscope according to claim 1, lenses having different focal lengths are used.

[0016]

According to the present invention, in the invention of claim 1, since the image receiving ends of the plurality of image guides with lenses are fixed to the same base portion, one observing means at the image receiving end,
For example, by using only one eyepiece lens and one television camera, it is possible to simultaneously observe the images sent by the image guides.

Further, in the invention of claim 2, since the lenses having different focal lengths are used for the respective image guides, it is possible to simultaneously observe from a long-distance image to a short-distance image in a state in which the pin is aligned. You can

[0018]

1 is a schematic view of an embodiment of the endoscope of the present invention, FIG. 1 (A) is an overall view, FIG. 1 (B) is an enlarged view of an end face of an insertion portion, and FIG. ) Is an enlarged view of the image receiving end. In the figure,
Reference numeral 1 is an insertion portion, 2 is an image guide lead portion, 3 is a write guide lead portion, 4 is a branch portion, 5 is an image receiving end, 6 is a light transmitting end, 7a and 7b are lenses, 8 is a light guide, 9 is a tube, 10a and 10b are image guides, and 11 is a base.

As shown in FIG. 1 (A), the endoscope of this embodiment has a substantially same shape as the conventional endoscope shown in FIG. 4 as a whole. However, they are different in that two image guides penetrate through the insertion portion 1 and the image guide lead portion 2.

As shown in FIG. 1B, in the insertion portion 1, the lenses 7a,
7b are arranged respectively, and are integrated with the light guide 8 by a tube 9 and protected. The two image guides pass through the insertion portion 1, separate from the light guide 8 at the branch portion 4, and pass through the image guide lead portion 2,
It extends to the image receiving end 5 and is fixed to one base 11 as shown in FIG.
The end faces of a and 10b appear.

In the above-described embodiment, the image guide is two.
Although the case of a book is shown, the number of image guides should be 3 or 4 depending on the allowable outer diameter and the allowable number of light guides.
You can add more books.

The operation of the above embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. In the figure, the same parts as those in FIG. 12 is a magnifying lens, 13 is an object to be observed, 1
4a and 14b are images.

The reflected light from the observed object 13 is reflected by the lens 7a.
After that, the image guide 10a is passed to the base 11. At the same time, through the lens 7b, the image guide 10
Go to base 11 through b. In the base 11, the image guides 10a and 10b are polished on the same plane, and the magnifying lens 12 functions as an eyepiece lens, and the image 14a sent by the image guide 10a and the image guide 10b sent by the image guide 10b. The image 14b can be observed.

At this time, in the vicinity of the tip of the insertion portion 1,
Lenses 7a, 7b and image guides 10a, 10b
By changing the position and the angle of, the images 14a and 14b become images in a slightly displaced range, and the observable visual field can be expanded.

Further, by using a fixed focus lens capable of observing a near field and a fixed focus lens capable of observing a far field as the lenses 7a and 7b, almost the same field of view can be observed and images 14a and 14b having different depths can be observed. 14b can be obtained. Therefore, from an optical point of view, lenses having different focal lengths may be used, or lenses having the same focal length may be configured to have different focal positions.

A specific example of the present invention will be described. One end of an image guide with an outer diameter of 0.35 mm, 6000 pixels, and a length of 2 m was ground to give an outer diameter of 0.35 mm and an observation distance of 2
A ~ 20 mm commercially available SELFOC lens was glued. On the other hand, one end of an image guide having an outer diameter of 0.2 mm, 3000 pixels, and a length of 2 m was polished, and a commercially available SELFOC lens having an outer diameter of 0.2 mm and an observation distance of 0.5 to 2 mm was bonded. The image receiving ends of both image guides were bonded and fixed in one metal die, and the die ends were polished. A light guide for illumination with a length of 2 m is placed along the image guide, and a polyimide tube with a length of 1 m and an outer diameter of 0.9 mm is used, 1 m from the lens end.
Protected part of. Further, the image guide and the light guide were branched and protected to form an image guide lead portion and a light guide lead portion, and a mouthpiece was attached to each end portion to manufacture an endoscope main body.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing an example of use of the present invention. In the figure, 1 is an insertion part, 15 is a xenon light source, 16 is a camera adapter, 17 is a television camera, 18 is a television monitor, and 19a and 19b are observation images.

The endoscope described above was used as the endoscope. The camera adapter 16 and the television camera 17 were attached to the image receiving end of the image guide, and the light guide lead portion was attached to the xenon light source. When an image “A” at a long distance from the television camera 17, an image “C” at a short distance, and an image “B” at an intermediate distance are displayed on the television monitor 18, the observation image 19 a is a long distance image. "A" was in focus, and in the observed image 19b, the image "C" at a short distance was in focus. The image "B" at the intermediate distance is in focus in any observation image. Therefore, all images could be observed simultaneously.

In the specific example described above, two image guides having different outer diameters are used. As the number of image guides increases, the outer diameter of the endoscope will increase, but
As described above, by using the main image guide and the sub image guide smaller than the main image guide, an endoscope having a plurality of image guides can be manufactured without increasing the outer diameter.

Although two image guides are used in the above embodiment, three or more image guides may be used. For example, when three are used, all three may be fixed to one base, or, as described with reference to FIG. 2, the characteristics of the incident optical system of the two image guides may be different. It can be fixed to a single base and the other can be formed on another image guide lead and fixed to another base. In this case, the base to which the two image guides are fixed can be used for visual observation, and the other base can be used for the television camera. The image guide for the television camera should be provided with a suitable optical system. By doing so, it is possible to display the optimum image on the television camera while visually adjusting the position and the like of the tip of the insertion portion 1. Even when four or more image guides are used, they can be fixed by distributing them to an appropriate base. Also in this case, it is necessary to fix at least two image guides for any one of the ferrules.

[0031]

As is apparent from the above description, according to the present invention, since the image receiving ends of a plurality of image guides with lenses are fixed to the same base, one observing means, for example, one image receiving end, is used. Only by using the eyepieces, the respective images sent by the image guides can be observed at the same time. In addition, since lenses with different focal lengths are used for each image guide, images that are in focus at short distance and long distance can be obtained, so that the direction in which the endoscope is facing in the body cavity can be determined. Easy to operate by the user. Further, there is an effect that it is possible to manufacture an endoscope having a small diameter, which cannot be achieved by a lens having a variable distance.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic view of an embodiment of the endoscope of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an operation explanatory diagram of the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a schematic view showing an example of use of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a schematic view of a conventional endoscope.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Insertion Part 2 Image Guide Lead Part 3 Light Guide Lead Part 4 Branching Part 5 Image Receiving End 6 Light Sending End 7, 7a, 7b Lens 8 Light Guide 9 Tube 10, 10a, 10b Image Guide 11 Base

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. An image guide with a plurality of lenses,
An endoscope in which a light guide for illumination is integrally protected by a thin tube, wherein at least two image guides have image-receiving ends fixed to the same base. 2. The endoscope according to claim 1, wherein lenses having different focal lengths are used.