ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,527,461, issued on Jan. 20, was assigned to OLYMPUS Corp. (Tokyo).
"Endoscope" was invented by Nobuaki Akui (Hino, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An endoscope includes a channel tube provided in a direction of a longitudinal axis of an insertion section, and a pipe sleeve provided in the operation section and including a tube insertion hole on a distal end side, the proximal end side of the channel tube being inserted in the tube insertion hole. An inner diameter at a first position on a proximal end side of the pipe sleeve is larger than an inner diameter at a second position in a hole part that communicates with a proximal end of...