• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.55-66
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• 2012

Purpose : During brain MRI scanning, subject's head motion can adversely affect MRI images. To minimize MR image distortion by head movement, we developed an optical tracking system to detect the 3-D movement of subjects. Materials and Methods: The system consisted of 2 CCD cameras, two infrared illuminators, reflective sphere-type markers, and frame grabber with desktop PC. Using calibration which is the procedure to calculate intrinsic/extrinsic parameters of each camera and triangulation, the system was desiged to detect 3-D coordinates of subject's head movement. We evaluated the accuracy of 3-D position of reflective markers on both test board and the real MRI scans. Results: The stereo system computed the 3-D position of markers accurately for the test board and for the subject with glasses with attached optical reflective marker, required to make regular head motion during MRI scanning. This head motion tracking didn't affect the resulting MR images even in the environment varying magnetic gradient and several RF pulses. Conclusion: This system has an advantage to detect subject's head motion in real-time. Using the developed system, MRI operator is able to determine whether he/she should stop or intervene in MRI acquisition to prevent more image distortions.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.8 no.10
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• pp.1369-1382
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• 2005

Vehicle segmentation, which extracts vehicle areas from road scenes, is one of the fundamental opera tions in lots of application areas including Intelligent Transportation Systems, and so on. We present a vehicle segmentation approach for still images captured from outdoor CCD cameras mounted on the supporting poles. We first divided the input image into a set of two-dimensional grids and then calculate the feature values of the edges for each grid. Through analyzing the feature values statistically, we can find the optimal rectangular grid area of the vehicle. Our preprocessing process calculates the statistics values for the feature values from background images captured under various circumstances. For a car image, we compare its feature values to the statistics values of the background images to finally decide whether the grid belongs to the vehicle area or not. We use dynamic programming technique to find the optimal rectangular gird area from these candidate grids. Based on the statistics analysis and global search techniques, our method is more systematic compared to the previous methods which usually rely on a kind of heuristics. Additionally, the statistics analysis achieves high reliability against noises and errors due to brightness changes, camera tremors, etc. Our prototype implementation performs the vehicle segmentation in average 0.150 second for each of $1280\times960$ car images. It shows $97.03\%$ of strictly successful cases from 270 images with various kinds of noises.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.7-12
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• 2007

With the advent of digital cinema, more and more movies are digitally produced, distributed via digital medium such as hard drives and network, and finally projected using a digital projector. However, digital cameras capable of shotting at 2K or higher resolution for digital cinema are still very expensive and bulky, which impedes rapid transition to digital production. As a low-cost solution for acquiring high resolution digital videos, we propose a hybrid camera consisting of a low-resolution CCD for capturing videos and a high-resolution CCD for capturing still images at regular intervals. From the output of the hybrid camera, we can synthesize high-resolution videos by software as follows: for each frame, 1. find pixel correspondences from the current frame to the previous and subsequent keyframes associated with high resolution still images, 2. synthesize a high-resolution image for the current frame by copying the image blocks associated with the corresponding pixels from the high-resolution keyframe images, and 3. complete the synthesis by filling holes in the synthesized image. This framework can be extended to making NPR video effects and capturing HDR videos.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.17-25
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• 2007

In most electronic imaging applications, image with high resolution(HR) are desired. HR means that pixel density within an image is high, and therefore HR image can offer more details that may be critical in various applications. Digital images that are captured by CCD and CMOS cameras usually have a very low resolution, which significantly limits the performance of image recognition systems. Image super-resolution techniques can be applied to overcome the limits of these imaging systems. Super-resolution techniques have been proposed to increase the resolution by combining information from multiple images. To techniques were consisted of the registration algorithm for estimation and shift, the nearest neighbor interpolation using weight of acquired frames and presented frames. In this paper, it is proposed the image interpolation techniques using the wavelet base function. This is applied to embody a correct edge image and natural image when expend part of the still image by applying the wavelet base function coefficient to the conventional Super-Resolution interpolation method. And the proposal algorithm in this paper is confirmed to improve the image applying the nearest neighbor interpolation algorithm, bilinear interpolation algorithm.,bicubic interpolation algorithm through the computer simulation.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.34 no.12C
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• pp.1138-1146
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• 2009

Digital cameras adopting a single CCD detector collect image color by subsampling in three color planes and successively interpolating the information to reconstruct full-resolution color images. Therefore, to recovery of a full-resolution color image from a color filter array (CFA) like the Bayer pattern is generally considered as an interpolation issue for the unknown color components. In this paper, we first calculate luminance component value by combining R, G, B channel component information which is quite different from the conventional demosaicing algorithm. Because conventional system calculates G channel component followed by computing R and B channel components. Integrating the obtained gradient edge information and the improved weighting function in luminance component, a new edge sensitive demosaicing technique is presented. Based on 24 well known testing images, simulation results proved that our presented high-quality demosaicing technique shows the best image quality performance when compared with several recently presented techniques.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.1020-1026
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• 2011

In this paper, we propose a method that measures the height and stagger of an catenary using the laser profile images. One line laser and area scanner CCD cameras are used. To quickly and accurately extract, from a photographed image, the area of the overhead line on which the line laser is shone, we consider the established fact that the catenary is the lowest among the electric wires. Here we are solving the the distance to the catenary if we know the distance the camera is from the ground and the angle of the catenary in the field of view. The angle will be related to the number of pixels in the image. This pixels per degree is a constant for the camera. Also, because of the different pixel resolution of the camera according to the overhead line position, we compensate the measurement result through camera calibration.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.35-45
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• 2008

Realtime visibility measurement using camera is a new method which can collect some realtime visibility data similar to those of the human eyes, and can replace the existing methods using the expensive optical equipment. There have been a few attempts to measure visibility by extracting depth and three-dimensional structure under bad weather conditions. However, if there are many movements of objects in the image, these approaches seem to be inappropriate. In addition, the realtime visibility measurement will require a relatively simple and fast processing. Typically the contrast degrades exponentially in the bad weather. Therefore, in this paper we propose an easy and quick method that extract contrast from images using a moving area filter and measure visibility by mathematically modelling of the relationship between image contrast and visibility. The moving area filter is used for removing the area of the sky and moving objects that affect visibility measurement on images. The method proposed here can make possible not only realtime visibility measurement from images taken by CCD cameras, but also steady visibility measurement by using the moving area filter in case of much traffic on the road.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-23
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• 2002

Motion capture system is widely used nowadays in the entertainment industry like movies, computer games and broadcasting. This system consist of several high resolution and high speed CCD cameras and expensive frame grabbing hardware for image acquisition. KAIST VR laboratory focused on low cost system for a few years and have been developed a LAN based optical motion capture system. But, by using low cost system some problems like occlusion, noise and swapping of markers' trajectory can be occurred. And more labor intensive work is needed for post-processing process. In this thesis, we propose a trajectory rectification algorithm by confidence model of markers attached on actor. Confidence model is based on graph structure and consist of linkage, marker and frame confidence. To reduce the manual work in post-processing, we have to reconstruct the marker graph by maximizing the frame confidence.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.31 no.6 s.119
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• pp.514-523
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• 2006

Production of green pepper has been increased due to customer's preference and a projected ten-year boom in the industry in Korea. This study was carried out to develop an automatic grading and sorting system for green pepper using machine vision. The system consisted of a feeding mechanism, segregation section, an image inspection chamber, image processing section, system control section, grading section, and discharging section. Green peppers were separated and transported using a bowl feeder with a vibrator and a belt conveyor, respectively. Images were taken using color CCD cameras and a color frame grabber. An on-line grading algorithm was developed using Visual C/C++. The green peppers could be graded into four classes by activating air nozzles located at the discharging section. Length and curvature of each green pepper were measured while removing a stem of it. The first derivative of thickness profile was used to remove a stem area of segmented image of the pepper. While pepper is moving at 0.45 m/s, the accuracy of grading sorting for large, medium and small pepper are 86.0%, 81.3% and 90.6% respectively. Sorting performance was 121 kg/hour, and about five times better than manual sorting. The developed system was also economically feasible to grade and sort green peppers showing the cost about 40% lower than that of manual operations.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.206-214
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• 2017

In this study, measurement of thermophysical properties of materials at high temperatures was performed. This experiment employed a heater device to heat the material to a high temperature. The images of the specimen surface due to thermal load at various temperatures were recorded using charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras. Afterwards, the full-field thermal deformation of the specimen was determined using the digital image correlation (DIC) method. The capability and accuracy of the proposed technique are verified by two experiments: (1) thermal deformation and strain measurement of a stainless steel specimen that was heated to $590^{\circ}C$ and (2) thermal expansion and thermal contraction measurements of specimen in the process of heating and cooling. This research focused on two goals: first, obtaining the temperature dependence of the coefficient of thermal expansion, which can be used as data input for finite element simulation; and second, investigating the capability of the DIC method in measuring full-field thermal deformation and strain. The results of the measured coefficient of thermal expansion were close to the values available in the handbook. The measurement results were in good agreement with finite element method simulation results. The results reveal that DIC is an effective and accurate technique for measuring full-field high-temperature thermal strain in engineering fields such as aerospace engineering.