• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.228-235
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• 2016

Flaws at dissimilar metal welds (DMWs), such as reactor coolant systems components, Control Rod Drive Mechanism (CRDM), Bottom Mounted Instrumentation (BMI) etc., in nuclear power plants have been found. Notably, primary water stress corrosion cracking (PWSCC) in the DMWs could cause significant reliability problems at nuclear power plants. Therefore, phased array ultrasound is widely used for inspecting surface break cracks and stress corrosion cracks in DMWs. However, inspection of DMWs using phased array ultrasound has a relatively low probability of detection of cracks, because the crystalline structure of welds causes distortion and splitting of the ultrasonic beams which propagates anisotropic medium. Therefore, advanced evaluation techniques of phased array ultrasound are needed for improvement in the probability of detection of flaws in DMWs. Thus, in this study, an investigation of focusing and steering phased array ultrasound in DMWs was carried out using a time reversal technique, and an adaptive focusing technique based on finite element method (FEM) simulation. Also, evaluation of focusing performance of three different focusing techniques was performed by comparing amplitude of phased array ultrasonic signals scattered from the targeted flaw with three different time delays.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.273-281
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• 2010

In this paper, we propose an automatic segmentation method of the endo- and epicardial boundary by using ray-casting profile based on intensity distribution and gradient information in CT images. First, endo-cardial boundary points are detected by using adaptive thresholding and seeded region growing. To include papillary muscles inside the boundary, the endo-cardial boundary points are refined by using ray-casting based profile. Second, epi-cardial boundary points which have both a myocardial intensity value and a maximum gradient are detected by using ray-casting based adaptive gradient profile. Finally, to preserve an elliptical or circular shape, the endo- and epi-cardial boundary points are refined by using elliptical interpolation and B-spline curve fitting. Then, curvature-based contour fitting is performed to overcome problems associated with heterogeneity of the myocardium intensity and lack of clear delineation between myocardium and adjacent anatomic structures. To evaluate our method, we performed visual inspection, accuracy and processing time. For accuracy evaluation, average distance difference and overalpping region ratio between automatic segmentation and manual segmentation are calculated. Experimental results show that the average distnace difference was $0.56{\pm}0.24mm$. The overlapping region ratio was $82{\pm}4.2%$ on average. In all experimental datasets, the whole process of our method was finished within 1 second.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.9-15
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• 2019

The purpose of present study is to assess the maximum width of the surface cracks using the histogram analysis of image processing techniques in concrete structures. For this purpose, the concrete crack image is acquired by the camera. The image is Grayscale coded and Binary coded. After Binary coded image is Dilate and Erode coded, the image is then recognized as separated objects by applying Labeling techniques. Over time, dust and stains may occur naturally on the surface of concrete. The crack image of concrete may include shadows and reflections by lighting depending on a surrounding conditions. In general, concrete cracks occur in a continuous pattern and noise of image appears in the form of shot noises. Bilateral Blurring and Adaptive Threshold apply to the Grayscale image to eliminate these effects. The remaining noises are removed by the object area ratio to the Labeled area. The maximum numbers of pixels and its positions in the crack objects without noises are calculated in x-direction and y-direction by Histogram analysis. The widths of the crack are estimated by trigonometric ratio at the positions of the pixels maximum numbers for the Labeled objects. Finally, the maximum crack width estimated by the proposed method is compared to the crack width measured with the crack gauge. The proposed method by the present study may increase the reliability for the estimation of maximum crack width using image processing techniques in concrete surface images.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.27-34
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• 1997

3-D image modeling is in high demand for automated visual inspection and non-destructive testing. It also can be useful in biomedical research, medical therapy, surgery planning, and simulation of critical surgery (i.e. cranio-facial). Image processing and image analysis are used to enhance and classify medical volumetric data. Analyzing medical volumetric data is very difficult In this paper, we propose a new image modeling method based on tetrahedrization to improve the visualization of three-dimensional medical volumetric data. In this method, the trivariate piecewise linear interpolation is applied through the constructed tetrahedral domain. Also, visualization methods including iso-surface, color contouring, and slicing are discussed. This method can be useful to the correct and speedy analysis of medical volumetric data, because it doesn't have the ambiguity problem of Marching Cubes algorithm and achieves the data reduction. We expect to compensate the degradation of an accuracy by using an adaptive sub-division of tetrahedrization based on least squares fitting.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.110-119
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• 2010

In this paper, we propose an automatic segmentation of the prostate using intensity distribution and gradient information in MR images. First, active shape model using adaptive intensity profile and multi-resolution technique is used to extract the prostate surface. Second, hole elimination using geometric information is performed to prevent the hole from occurring by converging the surface shape to the local optima. Third, the surface shape with large anatomical variation is corrected by using 2D gradient information. In this case, the corrected surface shape is often represented as rugged shape which is generated by the limited number of vertices. Thus, it is reconstructed by using surface modelling and smoothing. To evaluate our method, we performed the visual inspection, accuracy measures and processing time. For accuracy evaluation, the average distance difference and the overlapping volume ratio between automatic segmentation and manual segmentation by two radiologists are calculated. Experimental results show that the average distance difference was 0.3${\pm}$0.21mm and the overlapping volume ratio was 96.31${\pm}$2.71%. The total processing time of twenty patient data was 16 seconds on average.