Patent 7873408 was granted and assigned to Sony on January, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
To improve image quality as well as considering miniaturization. In the top surface 2A of a housing 2, a placing part 7 is provided near other end of shorter side ED2. A reflective board 6 is provided between an imaging opening part 3 facing to the above placing part 7 and one end of shorter side ED1. And in the housing 2 at a lower part of the above imaging opening part 3, a CCD image pickup device 4 for transmitting near infrared lights that passed through a finger FG placed on the placing part and was refracted by the reflective board 6 as a blood vessel image signal S1 is provided.