Corneal endothelial cell photographing apparatus

A corneal endothelial cell photographing apparatus comprising:

• an apparatus main unit including an illumination optical system for irradiating illumination light from an illumination light source to a cornea of an examinee's eye from an oblique direction and an imaging optical system for obtaining a corneal endothelial cell image by receiving reflection light from the cornea including corneal endothelial cells by a first imaging sensor;
• an anterior segment observation optical system including a second imaging sensor different from the first imaging sensor, the anterior segment observation optical system being adapted to pick up an anterior segment image of eye by the second imaging sensor to observe the anterior segment image from front;
• a controller adapted to turn on the illumination light source and obtain a plurality of picked-up images output from the first imaging sensor;
• an alignment detecting unit adapted to detect an alignment state of the main unit with respect to the examinee's eye based on a picked-up image output from the second imaging sensor during obtaining of the picked-up images by the controller;
• and
• a drive part for relatively moving the main unit with respect to the examinee's eye, wherein
• the corneal endothelial cell image (i) is formed on the first imaging sensor and (ii) is displayed on a monitor,
• the first imaging sensor is a two-dimensional imaging sensor, and
• when a detection result of the alignment detecting unit falls outside an alignment tolerance range, the controller drives the drive part to return the main unit to a proper alignment position.