Image tracking endoscope system

Claim 1

An endoscope system comprising: an endoscope; a holder for holding said endoscope; an image pickup section including an image pickup optical system for receiving an endoscopic image from said endoscope, a path branch for branching an optical path of said image pickup optical system into a first optical path and a second optical path, a wide angle image pickup element provided in the first optical path for forming a wide angle image from the endoscopic image, and a magnified image pickup element provided in the second optical path for forming a magnified image from the endoscopic image; a display for displaying an image provided by said image pickup section; an object identifier for identifying an object observed through said endoscope; a position detector for detecting a position of the object from a wide angle image formed by said wide angle image pickup element of said image pickup section, and for generating position data representing the detected position; and a view field switching control mechanism for moving the magnified image formed by said magnified pickup element of said image pickup section in accordance with said position data, without moving said endoscope, to thereby switch a view field of said endoscope.