• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.101-107
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was investigated optimal exposure condition in digital magnification mammography to decrease radiation dose and increase image quality of the examinee. Auto mode, the average glandular dose is higher than the manual mode. Average glandular dose and image quality were many differences on between grid and air gap technique in auto mode. However, Average glandular dose and signal-to-noise ratio were not different on between grid and air gap technique in manual mode. The signal-to-noise ratio was increased when using the air-gap technique in both mode. According to result, air gap technique may reduce average glandular dose and increase signal-to-noise ratio in digital magnification mammography.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.477-486
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of reconstruction filters, X-ray source trajectories and intervals in the quality of digital tomosynthesis (DT) images, and the results was clinically validated. The filtered back-projection was implemented by using Ramp, Shepp-Logan, Cosine, Hamming, Hann and Blackman filters, and the X-ray source trajectories were simulated with 1 × 36, 2 × 18, 3 × 12, 4 × 9 and 6 × 6 arrays. The X-ray source intervals were 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40 mm. The depth resolution, spatial resolution and noise of DT image were evaluated by measuring artifact spread function (ASF), full width at half maximum (FWHM) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), respectively. The results showed that the spatial resolution and noise properties of DT images were maximized by the Ramp and Blackman filters, respectively, and the depth resolution and noise properties of the DT images obtained with a 1 × 36 X-ray source trajectory were superior to the other trajectories. The depth resolution and noise properties of DT images improved with an increase of X-ray source intervals, and the high X-ray source intervals degraded the spatial resolution of DT images. Therefore, the characteristics of DT images are highly dependent on reconstruction filters, X-ray source trajectories and intervals, and it is necessary to use optimal imaging parameters in accordance with diagnostic purpose.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.28-35
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• 2015

In this study, we investigated the effects of an iterative reconstruction algorithm and an automatic exposure control (AEC) technique on image quality and radiation dose through phantom experiments with coronary computed tomography (CT) angiography protocols. We scanned the AAPM CT performance phantom using 320 multi-detector-row CT. At the tube voltages of 80, 100, and 120 kVp, the scanning was repeated with two settings of the AEC technique, i.e., with the target standard deviations (SD) values of 33 (the higher tube current) and 44 (the lower tube current). The scanned projection data were reconstructed also in two ways, with the filtered back projection (FBP) and with the iterative reconstruction technique (AIDR-3D). The image quality was evaluated quantitatively with the noise standard deviation, modulation transfer function, and the contrast to noise ratio (CNR). More specifically, we analyzed the influences of selection of a tube voltage and a reconstruction algorithm on tube current modulation and consequently on radiation dose. Reduction of image noise by the iterative reconstruction algorithm compared with the FBP was revealed eminently, especially with the lower tube current protocols, i.e., it was decreased by 46% and 38%, when the AEC was established with the lower dose (the target SD=44) and the higher dose (the target SD=33), respectively. As a side effect of iterative reconstruction, the spatial resolution was decreased by a degree that could not mar the remarkable gains in terms of noise reduction. Consequently, if coronary CT angiogprahy is scanned and reconstructed using both the automatic exposure control and iterative reconstruction techniques, it is anticipated that, in comparison with a conventional acquisition method, image noise can be reduced significantly with slight decrease in spatial resolution, implying clinical advantages of radiation dose reduction, still being faithful to the ALARA principle.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.4 no.12
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• pp.571-576
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• 2015

Image dehazing has been extensively studied, but the performance evaluation method for dehazing techniques has not attracted significant interest. This paper surveys many existing performance evaluation methods of image dehazing. In order to analyze the reliability of the evaluation methods, synthetic hazy images are first reconstructed using the ground-truth color and depth image pairs, and the dehazed images are then compared with the original haze-free images. Meanwhile we also evaluate dehazing algorithms not by the dehazed images' quality but by the performance of computer vision algorithms before/after applying image dehazing. All the aforementioned evaluation methods are analyzed and compared, and research direction for improving the existing methods is discussed.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.163-170
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• 2013

In general, images of outdoor scenes often contain degradation due to dust, water drop, haze, fog, smoke and so on, as a result they cause the contrast reduction and color fading. Haze removal is not easier problem due to the inherent ambiguity between the haze and the underlying scene. So, we propose a novel method to solve single scene dehazing problem using the region segmentation based on graph algorithm that has used a gradient value as a cost function. We segment the scene into different regions according to depth-related information and then estimate the global atmospheric light. The medium transmission can be directly estimated by the threshold function of graph-based segmentation algorithm. After estimating the medium transmission, we can restore the haze-free scene. We evaluated the degree of the visibility restoration between the proposed method and the existing methods by calculating the gradient of the edge between the restored scene and the original scene. Results on a variety of outdoor haze scene demonstrated the powerful haze removal and enhanced image quality of the proposed method.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.217-226
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• 2019

In this paper, we propose a filtering method that can improve the results of inverse tone-mapping using guided image filter. Inverse tone-mapping techniques have been proposed that convert LDR images to HDR. Recently, many algorithms have been studied to convert single LDR images into HDR images using CNN. Among them, there exists an algorithm for restoring pixel information using CNN which learned to restore saturated region. The algorithm does not suppress the noise in the non-saturation region and cannot restore the detail in the saturated region. The proposed algorithm suppresses the noise in the non-saturated region and restores the detail of the saturated region using a WGIF in the input image, and then applies it to the CNN to improve the quality of the final image. The proposed algorithm shows a higher quantitative image quality index than the existing algorithms when the HDR quantitative image quality index was measured.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.663-669
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• 2017

In diagnostic medical imaging, it is essential to reduce the scattered radiation for the high medical image quality and low patient dose. Therefore, in this study, the influence of the scattered radiation on medical images was analyzed as the tube voltage increases. For this purpose, ANSI chest phantom was used to measure the scattering ratio, and the scattering effect on the image quality was investigated by RMS evaluation, RSD and NPS analysis. It was found that the scattering ratio with increasing x-ray tube voltage gradually increased to 48.8% at 73 kV tube voltage and to 80.1% at 93 kV tube voltage. As a result of RMS analysis for evaluating the image quality, RMS value according to increase of tube voltage was increased, resulting in low image quality. Also, the NPS value at 2.5 lp/mm spatial frequency was increased by 20% when the tube voltage was increased by 93 kV compared to the tube voltage of 73 kV. From this study, it can be seen that the scattering radiation have a significant effect on the image quality according to the increase of x-ray tube voltage. The results of this study can be used as basic data for the improvement of medical imaging quality.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.84-89
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to compare radiation dose and image quality between low-dose (LDP) and standard-dose protocol (SDP). LDP (120 kVp, 30 mAs, 2-mm thickness) and SDP (120 kVp, 180 mAs, 1.2-mm thickness) images obtained from 61 subjects were retrospectively evaluated at level of carina bifurcation, using multi-detector CT (Brilliance 16, Philips Medical Systems). Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were calculated at ascending aorta and infraspinatus muscle, from CT number and back-ground noise. Radiation dose from two protocols measured at 5-point using acrylic-phantom, and CT number and noise measured at 4-point using water-phantom. All statistical analysis were performed using SPSS 19.0 program. LDP images showed significantly more noise and a significantly lower SNR and CNR than did SDP images at ascending aorta and infraspinatus muscle. Noise, SNR and CNR were significantly correlated with body mass index (p<0.001). Radiation dose, SNR and CNR from phantom were significant differences between two protocols. LDP showed a significant reduction of radiation dose with a significant change in SNR and CNR compared with SDP. Therefore, exposure dose on LDP in clinical applications needs resetting highly more considering image quality.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.51-58
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• 2021

Three degrees of freedom plus(3DoF+) and six degrees of freedom(6DoF) system, which supports a user's movements in graphical and natural scene-based virtual reality, requires multiple high-quality and high-resolution videos to provide immersive media. Previous video quality assessment methods are not appropriate for the 3DoF+ and 6DoF system assessment because different types of artifacts occur in these systems which are not shown in the traditional video compression. This paper provides the performance assessments of several quality assessment methods in 3DoF+ system. Furthermore, this paper presents a super metric, which combines multiple quality assessment methods, thereby it showed a higher correlation coefficient with the subjective quality assessment than the previous methods. Experimental results on 3DoF+ immersive video showed 0.4513 gain on correlation coefficient with subjective quality assessment compared to that of peak signal-to-noise ratio(PSNR).

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.791-802
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• 2010

Recent prevalence of progressive scan display such as LCD TV demands the quality improvement of existing deinterlacing techniques that convert interlaced scan images including HDTV broadcasting to progressive scan images. In this paper, we proposea motion adaptive deinterlacing technique which can be used for spatial methods, temporal methods, and the spatial-temporal methods can be used for the deinterlacing techniques selectively based on the threshold values calculated by the statistics of motion in the video contents. We also propose an improved spatial deinterlacing technique that adaptively use M-ELA and DOI based on the slant of edges that are obtained by Sobel operation. The improved picture quality of the proposed algorithm is confirmed by objective and subjective quality tests on many test image sequences.