Patent 7567268 was granted and assigned to RICOH COMPANY,LTD. on July, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A light-emission control unit controls an emission of a light beam from a light-beam generating unit based on an input image signal. A light-beam scanning unit deflects the light beam in a main scanning direction and irradiates the deflected light beam on an image carrier. An anomalous-light emission detecting unit detects an anomalous light emission of the light-beam generating unit when there is no image signal input to the light-emission control unit. A control unit performs an error processing based on the detected anomalous light emission.