PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an endoscope apparatus capable of calculating biological function information, such as the oxygen saturation of a biological mucosa or the like, with high precision while reducing the influence of the motion of a subject, and capable of visualizing a biological function, such as oxygen saturation, accurately and with high precision.SOLUTION: The endoscope apparatus includes: an illumination means for irradiating a living body to be an object with at least three kinds of illumination light having different wavelengths including standard light, first reference light and second reference light, an illumination light switching means for periodically switching the three kinds of illumination light for each imaging frame an imaging means for capturing images by the three kinds of illumination light in each imaging frame and a biological information acquisition means for acquiring biological function information from the captured image data. The irradiation order of the illumination light is switched at least to be in order of the first reference light, the standard light and the second reference light, a standard image by the standard light and reference images by the reference light are acquired, and the biological function information is calculated on the basis of the standard image and the reference images.COPYRIGHT: (C)2012,JPO&INPIT【課題】生体粘膜等の酸素飽和度等の生体機能情報を、被検写体の動きの影響を少なくして、高精度な生体機能情報を算出することができ、酸素飽和度などの生体機能を正確かつ高い精度で可視化することができる内視鏡装置を提供する。【解決手段】基準光、第1の参照光及び第2の参照光を含む互いに波長の異なる少なくとも3種の照明光を被写体となる生体に照射する照明手段と、3種の照明光を撮像フレーム毎に周期的に切り替える照明光切替手段と、撮像フレーム毎に3種の照明光による撮像を行う撮像手段と、撮像データから生体機能情報を取得する生体情報取得手段と、を有し、照明光の照射順を、少なくとも、第1の参照光、基準光、第2の参照光の順になるように切り替え、基準光による基準画像と、基準光以外の照明光による参照画像を取得し、基準画像及び参照画像に基づいて生体機能情報を算出することにより、上記課題を解決する。【選択図】図1
