Vocal cord stroboscopy

A method of operating a video laryngoscope system comprising:

• generating a first frame and a second frame of a plurality of video frames using a rolling shutter;
• determining a base frequency of a vocalization based on an audio signal;
• generating pulses of light based on the base frequency;
• adjusting a duration and position in time of the pulses based on the base frequency during the first and second frames;
• and
• selectively applying a digital line gain to at least a portion of the first frame and a portion of the second frame, the digital line gain applied to pixel values on one or more lines of the portions of the first and second frames, based on a gap time between the first frame and the second frame and the duration and position in time of the pulses.

A medical scope system comprising:

• a stroboscopic laryngoscope;
• a microphone;
• a camera control module including an electronic controller communicatively coupled to the stroboscopic laryngoscope and the microphone;
• a display device communicatively coupled to the camera control module;
• and
• wherein the camera control module electronic controller is operable for:
• measuring a patient's vocalization with the microphone and determining a base frequency of the vocalization;
• during the patient's vocalization, causing a light emitter of the stroboscopic laryngoscope to pulse at a timing interval selected based on the base frequency of the vocalization;
• reading image data from an image sensor array of the stroboscopic laryngoscope according to a rolling shutter process including:
• (a) creating two or more light emitter pulses during first and second adjacent image frames, (b) reading the image data from lines of the image sensor array offset in time such that at least two of the two or more light emitter pulses each expose sensor pixels in both first and a second image frames simultaneously, and (c) selecting a first subset of the image data from the first frame and a second subset of the image sensor data from the second frame, the second subset including a different frame portion than the first subset, the first and second subsets including data resulting from the simultaneous exposure of the first and second frames;
• combining the image data from the first and second subsets to create a combined image frame based on the first and second frames;
• applying a digital gain to value on one or more lines in the first and second subsets to compensate for a loss of exposure due to a gap time between the first and second frames in the rolling shutter process;
• and
• applying a second digital gain value to the combined image frames based to compensate for varying exposure due to the timing interval of the pulses of light.