OLYMPUS

Olympus Corporation provides the equipment to enable "Early Diagnosis" by endoscopic procedure and "Minimally Invasive Therapy." To realize these two values, Olympus will provide Healthcare Professionals with world-leading technology,products, services, and solutions to benefit society.

Olympus medical business started out producing gastrointestinal endoscopes for diagnostic use. The first endoscope was called a "gastrocamera" and it could only take photographs. In fact, lesions could not be seen until the film was developed. This was followed by the development of fiberscopes that used glass fiber to observe the interior of the stomach in real time.This improvement made it possible to perform treatment at the same time as the diagnosis, and Olympus embarked on the development of therapeutic devices such as EndoTherapy products to facilitate these procedures. Subsequently, videoscopes equipped with electronic image sensors were developed in the late 1980s to further improve visualization.

Minimally invasive therapy progressed hand in hand with advances in early diagnosis technologies. For example, as screening capabilities were improved thanks to innovative technologies including NBI (Narrow Band Imaging), minimally invasive therapies for early stage cancer were developed. If these minimally invasive therapies were not available, any benefits from early diagnosis would be reduced by the need to resort to major operations such as laparotomies.