High resolution image pickup system with color dispersion means

Claim 1

A high resolution image pickup system with color dispersion means comprising: illuminating means capable of sequentially irradiating at least three kinds of color lights different from each other in wavelength onto an object under observation; an objective lens system forming images of said object with said color lights coming from said object irradiated by said illuminating means; a single solid-state image sensor provided with a plurality of picture elements regularly arrayed on a light-receiving surface thereof and receiving said object images formed, by said objective lens system; and signal processing means connected to said image sensor for producing an image signal representing a color image of said object based on a photo-electric signal supplied from said image sensor, wherein: color dispersion means is provided to be disposed in an optical path through which respective color lights coming from said object reach said image sensor and to receive and separately emanate said three kinds of color lights entering through the same path so that they are incident on different positions of said image sensor in accordance with their wavelengths; said object images with said respective color lights are formed at positions different from each other on the light receiving surface of said solid-state image sensor through said objective lens system and said color dispersion means; a compound image signal representing said object is produced in said signal processing means by superposing said image signals of said respective color lights obtained on the basis of said photoelectric signals supplied from said image sensor in response to each of said object images with said respective color lights; and a color object image is represented observably by supplying said compound image signal to display means.