PURPOSE: To detect deterioration of an instantaneous lighting illuminator accurately.
CONSTITUTION: A strobe illuminator 1 has a strobe discharge tube, i.e., a xenon lamp, is driven by a strobe power supply 7 and a trigger circuit 8. An optical sensor 2 measures the luminous intensity of the strobe illuminator 1 and an integrator 3 integrates the luminous intensity with time to determine the quantity of light. A decision unit 5 makes a decision that the illuminator 1 has deteriorated when the output from an A/D converter 4, i.e., the quantity of light of the strobe illuminator 1, drops below a set level. An abnormality indicator 6 indicates the abnormality by lighting an alarm lamp, for example. As compared with a conventional detection method based on the lowering of peak luminous intensity, the measurement can be made stably regardless of the drift of luminous intensity, i.e., deformation of luminous intensity waveform, by determining the integrated value thereof and the deterioration of illuminator can be detected more effectively based on the quantity of light.
INOUE AKINORI
MATSUNO TERUHISA
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