Portable electronic endoscopic imaging system

The paper presents a low-power, inexpensive and portable endoscopic imaging system. A 1.3 million pixels CMOS sensor is considered as an image capture. The sensor and the lens system are designed to minify the cannula diameter of the endoscope and therefore minimize the incision size for insertion. LVDS is used for image data transmission between the sensor and CPU to realize a long distance, high speed and low noise system. An ARM 920T based microcontroller is employed as the control core for the image transmission module, display module and other modules. The camera interface and LCD controller are integrated in the microcontroller and both have a dedicated DMA supports to transmit image data though AHB to or from frame buffer located in system memory without CPU intervention. The image is displayed on an 8 inch LCD screen with 800 x 600 resolution and 16 bits of color depth. With the maximum capture and display rate of 15 fps, this system can provide a clear image enough for laparoscopy or industrial application. And with integrated camera, light source and video display function, it can also be used as a portable, miniature and inexpensive endoscope.