• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제48권1호
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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.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제26권1호
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• pp.31-35
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• 2005

A novel synthetic aperture method for real-time three-way dynamic focusing is proposed, which provides lateral beam patterns represented as the product of Fourier transforms of transmit subaperture, receive subaperture, and a synthetic window function. In the proposed method, all array elements are fired individually and for each firing echo signals are recorded from all elements of a receive subaperture moving along an array with the transmit element. The three-way dynamic focusing is then achieved by employing a synthetic aperture algorithm for two-way dynamic focusing and a synthetic focusing method for transmit dynamic focusing. Both theoretical analysis and computer simulation results show that the proposed method produces ultrasound beams with improved lateral resolution at all depths compared to the conventional phased array imaging and synthetic aperture focusing methods.

• 대한정형외과 초음파학회지
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• 제5권2호
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• pp.94-98
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• 2012

석회화 건염은 건-골 부착부에 침착된 칼슘 수산화 인회석 결정 주위로 염증이 생기는 질환인데 체외충격파치료가 석회화 건염에 대한 비침습적 치료로써 효과적으로 많이 사용되고 있다. 실제 임상에서는 병변 부위에 정확히 체외충격파를 시행하기보다는 주로 촉진과 압통 부위 확인만으로 충격파 시행범위를 정하고 있다. 방사선 투시하에 석회 침착부위에 정확히 체외충격파를 시행하는 것이 임상 결과가 월등히 우수하다는 것은 알려져 있다. 초음파는 간편하고 비싸지 않으며 방사선 피폭이 없으면서 건 질환을 진단하는데 아주 효과적인 진단 기기이지만 체외충격파 치료의 조준에 있어서의 역할은 확립되어 있지 않다. 저자들은 중둔건에 발생한 거대 석회화 건염을 초음파를 이용하여 병변 부위의 위치를 정확히 조준하면서 체외충격파치료를 시행함으로써 석회 침착의 완전 소실을 얻은 증례를 경험하였기에 문헌 고찰과 함께 보고하고자 한다.

• 한국정밀공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국정밀공학회 2012년도 추계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.885-886
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• 2012

• Clinical Pain
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• 제20권1호
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• pp.7-14
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• 2021

Musculoskeletal ultrasound has evolved as the essential tool to diagnose and guide intervention procedures in people with neuromusculoskeletal conditions. Image optimization and understanding device operations are core components for ultrasound guided intervention procedure training. All ultrasound machines share the common operative features and there are various buttons for the features in the device control panel. Ultrasound "knobology" refers to the thorough understanding of imaging optimization. This review addressed basic information for the transducers, depth setting, gain and focus control, different modes focusing on brightness and doppler modes.

• 대한전기학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전기학회 2004년도 학술대회 논문집 정보 및 제어부문
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• pp.595-597
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• 2004

In this paper range measurement systems using ultrasonic and visual sensors are designed. By varying the focus of a camera, the range to a target pattern is computed. Pour different methods are tested for the focusing-based range measurement. The best result is obtained when counting edge pixels found by Laplacian operator. Higher accuracy can be obtained by fusing the measurement of camera focusing with that of ultrasonic sensor. The system designed is experimented within the range of 300-450mm.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제22권4호
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• pp.321-330
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• 2001

In this paper, we propose a new synthetic aperture focusing scheme for improving the lateral resolution which is one of the most important factors determining the quality of ultrasound imaging. The proposed scheme enables full round-trip dynamic focusing with approximately limited property. This properties are obtained through transmitting plane waves of which the traveling angle varies with the receive subaperture position, as opposed to stepping the spherical wave source across an array in other synthetic aperture focusing schemes, and employing dynamic focusing in receive. In this paper, the properties of the proposed scheme is analyzed in which a hypothetical infinite line source is used to transmit the plane waves and verified through computer simulation results. Also, we show that the proposed scheme is realizable with an array transducer with a finite aperture size. In summary, it is shown through comparison between the field contours of the proposed scheme and the conventional scheme that the proposed scheme can improve greatly the lateral resolution of ultrasound imaging.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제28권6호
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• pp.803-810
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• 2007

Although synthetic aperture focusing techniques can improve the spatial resolution of ultrasound imaging, they have not been employed in a commercial product because they require a real-time N-channel beamformer with a tremendously increased hardware complexity for simultaneous beamforming along M multiple lines. In this paper, a hardware-efficient beamformer architecture for synthetic aperture focusing is presented. In contrast to the straightforward design using NM delay calculators, the proposed method utilizes only M delay calculators by sharing the same values among the focusing delays which should be calculated at the same time between the N channels for all imaging points along the M scan lines. In general, synthetic aperture beamforming requires M 2-port memories. In the proposed beamformer, the input data for each channel is first upsampled with a 4-fold interpolator and each polyphase component of the interpolator output is stored into a 2-port memory separately, requiring 4M 2-port memories for each channel. By properly limiting the area formed with the synthetic aperture focusing, the input memory buffer can be implemented with only 4 2-port memories and one short multi-port memory.

• 비파괴검사학회지
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• 제20권6호
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• pp.521-537
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• 2000

초음파 영상은 의료진단을 위한 영상기기 중 가장 널리 쓰이고 있는 방법으로 전자공학에 있어서 DSP 및 VLSI 분야의 기술발전에 힘입어 보다 효율적이고 복잡한 기법들의 적용이 가능하여져 90년대에 이르러 시스템의 성능이 매우 빠르게 발달되었다. 본 논문은 의료진단용 초음파 영상장치에서 사용되는 주요 디지털 신호처리 기법과 시스템 구현 기술에 대하여 기술하였다. 구체적으로는 일반적인 초음파 영상장치의 구조 및 신호처리 기법을 소개하고, 90년대에 개발된 디지털 초음파 영상장치의 기술적인 내용을 그 기술 동향과 전망과 함께 다루었다. 특히 초음파 영상의 화질을 결정하는 가장 중요한 요소인 해상도를 증대하기 위한 모든 초음파 집속 기법을 표현할 수 있는 통합 합성 구경 모형을 제시하고, 이론적인 해석을 통하여 초음파 영상을 위한 어레이 신호처리 기법들을 구분하고 각 방법들에 대한 특성을 조사하였나. 본 논문에서 소개된 신호처리 기법들은 초음파를 이용한 비파괴 검사 분야에 유용하게 적용될 수 있는 것 들이다.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제9권1호
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• pp.87-92
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• 1988

In this paper, a new focusing method, to be called the pipelined sampled delay focusing (PSDF), is implemented. This method improves the lateral resolution in ultrasound imaging system. In PSDF, the analog belay lines are no longer necessary because sampling sum process can replace the conventional delay sum process. Also, the method offers continuous dynamic focusing on the resolution pixel basis, and eliminates the constraint that the maximum delay time is less than the sampling interval. Second order sampling is adopted in order to extend the sampling interval.