• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.774-779
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• 2003

Arc-shaped line array slits have been used for the laser generation of focused Lamb waves. The spatially expanded Nd:YAG pulse laser was illuminated through the arc-shaped line array slit on the surface of a sample plate to generate the Lamb waves of the same pattern as the slit. Then the generated Lamb waves were focused at the point of which distance from the slit position is dependent on the curvature of slit arc. The proposed method showed better spatial resolution than the conventional linear array slit in the detection of laser machined linear defect and drill machined circular defect on aluminum plates of 1mm thickness.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.271-277
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• 1998

Nondestructive method can include both testing itself and analysis or evaluation of the testing results. Although vast amount of testing can be accomplished in a fairly short amount of time due to the advancement of electronic technology. it is really difficult matter to identify whether the indication found during testing corresponds to be a real defect. Thus, in ultrasonic testing, advanced digital signal processing techniques have been widely studied in order to identify the shape of the defect during testing, and one of the signal processing techniques, synthetic aperture focusing technique(SAFT) was tried for holes machined in carbon steel plate in this study. Result showed that signal to noise ratio has been improved considerably compared to the result from original RF signals.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.264-273
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• 2015

Improvement of the radiation beam profile of a medical ultrasonic transducer has been researched in this paper. In order to improve the beam profile, a new transducer structure has been devised that includes both a shaded electrode and a multi-focus lens. For a linear sound source, the beam profile was investigated through finite element analysis, and then the optimal design of the devised structure was carried out by considering such performances as sidelobe level, focal range and beamwidth simultaneously. In the process, the optimal dimension of the devised structure was derived by using the ratio of the focal range to the minimum beamwidth as a performance index. As a result, the beam profile has been improved to have a lower sidelobe level at -20.2 dB and a consistent narrow beamwidth from 30 mm to 160 mm depth with the minimum beamwidth at 2.04 mm. Further, a prototype transducer was fabricated to have the devised structure, and its performance was measured and compared with the analysis results to confirm the validity of the devised transducer structure.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.112-121
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• 1994

This paper discusses the feasibility of ultrasonic C-scan technique for nondestructive evaluation of spot weld quality. Ultrasonic evaluation for spot weld quality was performed by immersion method with the mechanical and the electronic scanning of point-focussed ultrasonic beam(25 MHz). For the sake of the approach to the quantitative measurement of nugget diameter and the discrimination of the corona bond from nugget, preliminary infinitesimal gap experiment by newton ring is tried in order to set up the optimum ultrasonic test condition. Ultrasonic image data obtained were confirmed and compared by optical microscope and SAM(Scanning Acoustic Microscope) observation of the spot-weld cross section. The results show that the nugget diameter can be measured with the accuracy of 1.0mm, and voids included in nugget can be detected to $10{\mu}m$ extent with simplicity and accuracy. Finally, it was found that it is necessary to make a profound study of definite discrimination of corona bond from nugget and the approach of quantitative evaluation of nugget diameter by utilizing the various image processing techniques.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.236-240
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• 2017

In this paper, we investigate the thermal response of skin tissue to high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) by means of infrared (IR) thermal imaging. For skin tightening, a 7-MHz ultrasound transducer is used to induce irreversible tissue coagulation in porcine skin. An IR camera is employed to monitor spatiotemporal changes of the temperature in the tissue. The maximum temperature in the tissue increased linearly with applied energy, up to $90^{\circ}C$. The extent of irreversible tissue coagulation (up to 3.2 mm in width) corresponds well to the spatial distribution of the temperature during HIFU sonication. Histological analysis confirms that the temperature beyond the coagulation threshold (${\sim}65^{\circ}C$) delineates the margin of collagen denaturation in the tissue. IR thermal imaging can be a feasible method for quantifying the degree of thermal coagulation in HIFU-induced skin treatment.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.467-475
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• 2019

A high-intensity ultrasound wave generates acoustic streaming and acoustic radiation forces when propagating through a medium. An acoustic radiation force generated in a three-dimensional space can produce a solid tactile sensation, delivering spatial information directly to the human skin. We placed 154 ultrasound transmit elements with a frequency of 40 kHz on a concave circular dish, and generated an acoustic radiation force at the focal point by transmitting the ultrasound wave. To feel the tactile sensation better, the transmit elements were excited by sine waves whose amplitude was modulated by a 60 Hz square wave. As an application of ultrasonic tactile sensing, a region where tactile sense is formed in the air is used as an indicator for the position of the hand. We confirmed the utility of ultrasonic tactile feedback by implementing a system that provides the number of fingers to a machine by receiving the shape of the hand at the focal point where the tactile sense is detected.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.192-199
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• 2013

Purpose : To retrospectively evaluate the diagnostic performance of dynamic contrast-enhanced MR imaging (DCE-MRI) in detecting recurrent prostate cancer after HIFU of clinically localized cancer, as compared with T2-weighted imaging (T2WI). Materials and Methods: Twenty-six patients with increased prostate-specific antigen levels after HIFU were included in this study. All MR examinations were performed using T2WI and DCE-MRI, followed by transrectal ultrasound-guided biopsy. MRI and biopsy results were correlated in six prostate sectors. Residual or recurrent cancer after HIFU was defined as local tumor progression if biopsy results showed any cancer foci. Two independent readers interpreted the MR images. Results: Of 156 prostate sectors, 51 (33%) were positive for cancer in 17 patients. For detecting local tumor progression, the sensitivity of DCE-MRI and T2WI was 80% and 57% for reader 1 (P < 0.001) versus 84% and 61% for reader 2 (P < 0.001), respectively. The specificity and overall accuracy between DCE-MRI and T2WI showed no statistical difference in both readers (P > 0.05). Interobserver agreement of DCE-MRI and T2WI was moderate and fair, respectively. Conclusion: For detecting local tumor progression of prostate cancer after HIFU, DCE-MRI was more sensitive than T2WI, with less interobserver variability.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.160-164
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• 2013

A laser ultrasonic inspection system is a non-contact inspection device which generates and measures ultrasonics by using laser beam. A laser ultrasonic inspection system provides a high measurement resolution because the ultrasonic signal generated by a pulse laser beam has a wide-band spectrum and the ultrasonic signal is measured from a small focused spot of a measuring laser beam. In this study, galvanic corrosion phenomenon was measured by non-destructive and non-contact method using the laser. The case of mixed foreign material on the part of corrosion was assumed and laser ultrasonic experiment was conducted. Ultrasonic was generated by pulse laser from the back side of the specimen and ultrasonic signal was acquired from the same location of the front side using continuous wave laser and Confocal Fabry-Perot Interferometer(CFPI). The characteristic of the ultrasonic signal of exist foreign material part was analyzed and the location and size of foreign material was measured.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.321-325
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• 1998

This paper presents a simple, practical, and efficient method for estimating the speed of sound in reflection mode in ultrasound medical imaging. Its accurate determination is indispensable in order to obtain both good resolution and correct geometrical and volumetric information about human organs such as heart and kidney. Up to now, there have been several methods available, but they all suffer from either poor performance or high complexity. The proposed method finds out an optimum focusing delay profile in such a way that the brightness in a region of interest is maximized using continuous dynamic focusing in receive under fixed transmit focusing. Experiments carried out on a real ultrasound medical phantom reveals that the method a quite simple and effective in providing good speed of sound estimation, hence improved resolution and images, adding to dignostic utility.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.299-306
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• 2015

A conventional phased array system can control an ultrasonic beam electronically by adjusting the excitation time delay of individual elements in a multi-element probe and produce an ultrasonic image. In Contrast, full matrix capture (FMC) is a data acquisition process that allows receiving ultrasonic signals from one single shot of the phased array transducer element through all the other elements and captures the complete dataset from every possible transmit-receive combination. This FMC data can be used to create the ultrasonic image in post processing. It is possible to produce not only images equivalent to conventional phased array image but also total focusing method (TFM) images with improved resolution and sharpness, which is virtually focused at any point in a region of interest. In this paper, the system that can perform FMC by using a conventional phased array instrument is developed, and a study was conducted on the imaging algorithms to reconstruct sector B-scan and TFM images from FMC dataset.