• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.217-232
• /
• 1999

The ability to see the internal organs of the human body in a noninvasive way is a powerful diagnostic tool of modern medicine. Among these imaging modalities such as X-ray, MRI, and ultrasound. MRI and ultrasound are presenting much less risk of undesirable damage of both patient and examiner. In fact, no deleterious effects have been reported as a result of clinical examination by using MRI and ultrasound diagnostic equipment. As a result. their market volume has been rapidly increased. MRI has a good resolution. but there are a few disadvantages such as high price. non-real-time imaging capability. and expensive diagnostic cost. On the other hand, the ultrasound imaging system has inherently poor resolution as compared with X-ray and MRI. In spite of its poor resolution, the ultrasound diagnostic equipment is lower in price and has an ability of real-time imaging as compared with the others. As a result. the ultrasound imaging system has become general and essential modality for imaging the internal organs of human body. In this review various researches and developments to enhance the resolution of the ultrasound images are explained and future trends of the ultrasound imaging technology are described.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.31 no.4
• /
• pp.421-424
• /
• 2011

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
• /
• v.43 no.4
• /
• pp.369-378
• /
• 2018

Purpose: The aim of this study was to construct a saponin content-predicting model using shortwave infrared imaging spectroscopy. Methods: The experiment used a shortwave imaging spectrometer and ENVI spectral acquisition software sampling a spectrum of 910 nm-2500 nm. The corresponding preprocessing and mathematical modeling analysis was performed by Unscrambler 9.7 software to establish a ginsenoside nondestructive spectral testing prediction model. Results: The optimal preprocessing method was determined to be a standard normal variable transformation combined with the second-order differential method. The coefficient of determination, $R^2$, of the mathematical model established by the partial least squares method was found to be 0.9999, while the root mean squared error of prediction, RMSEP, was found to be 0.0043, and root mean squared error of calibration, RMSEC, was 0.0041. The residuals of the majority of the samples used for the prediction were between ${\pm}1$. Conclusion: The experiment showed that the predicted model featured a high correlation with real values and a good prediction result, such that this technique can be appropriately applied for the nondestructive testing of ginseng quality.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.33 no.3
• /
• pp.283-288
• /
• 2013

This paper describes development of a high speed Doppler OFDI system for non-invasive vascular imaging. Doppler OFDI (optical frequency domain imaging) is one of the phase-resolved second generation OCT (optical coherence tomography) techniques for high resolution imaging of moving elements in biological tissues. To achieve a phase-resolved imaging, two temporally separated measurements are required. In a conventional Doppler OCT, a pair of massively oversampled successive A-lines is used to minimize de-correlation noise at the expense of significant imaging speed reduction. To minimize a de-correlation noise between targeted two measurements without suffering from significant imaging speed reduction, several methods have been developed such as an optimized scanning pattern and polarization multiplexed dual beam scanning. This research represent novel imaging technique using frequency multiplexed dual beam illumination to measure exactly same position with aimed time interval. Developed system has been verified using a tissue phantom and mouse vessel imaging.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.32 no.5
• /
• pp.573-584
• /
• 2012

Breast and prostate tumors or cancers tend to be stiffer than the surrounding normal tissue. However, the difference in echogenicity between cancerous and normal tissues is not clearly distinguishable in ultrasound B-mode imaging. Thus, imaging the stiffness contrast between the two different tissue types helps to diagnose lesions quantitatively, and such a method of imaging the elasticity of human tissue is termed ultrasound elasticity imaging. Recently, elasticity imaging has become an effective complementary diagnostic modality along with ultrasound B-mode imaging. This paper presents various elasticity imaging methods that have been reported up to now and describes their characteristics and principles of operation.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.338-343
• /
• 2009

Tomography is the imaging method of cross sectional area using multi beam signals and is mainly applied to the medical diagnosis to acquire the image of the inside human body. This method is pretty meaningful in nondestructive evaluation field since the imaging of the inspection region can enhance the comprehension of the inspector. Recently, much attention has been paid to the guided wave for the diagnosis of platelike structures. So, in this work, a study on the imaging of the damage location in a plate was carried out on the basis of computer aided analysis of guided waves and tomographic imaging. To this end, boundary element method was employed to analyze the effect of the damage in plate on the propagation of the guided waves and the analytic results were applied to the tomographic imaging method to identify the damage location. Consequently, it was shown that the number of sensors heavily affect the inspection performance of the damage location.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.449-464
• /
• 2008

An array based, outward monitoring, ultrasonic guided wave based SHM technique using a single transmitter and multiple receivers (STMR), with a small footprint is discussed here. The previous implementation of such SHM arrays used a phase-reconstruction algorithm (that is similar to the beam-steering algorithm) for the imaging of reflectors. These algorithms were found to have a limitation during the imaging of defects/reflectors that are present in the "near-field" of the array. Here, the "near-field" is defined to be approximately 3-4 times the diameter of the compact array. This limitation is caused by approximations in the beam-steering reconstruction algorithm. In this paper, a migration-based reconstruction algorithm, with dispersion correction in the frequency domain, is discussed. Simulation and experimental studies are used to demonstrate that this algorithm improves the reconstruction in the "near-field" without decreasing the ability to reconstruct defects in the "far-field" in both isotropic and anisotropic plates.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.32 no.5
• /
• pp.564-572
• /
• 2012

Harmonic imaging is introduced in the present article and its principle and physical characteristics is described in contrast to conventional ultrasonic imaging. The principle of the conventional image which uses ultrasonic echoes reflected at the interfaces between tissues is presented, and the nonlinear ultrasonic propagation which results in harmonic components is conceptually described. The pulse inversion technique which effectively extracts the harmonic components from the ultrasonic echo signals is introduced, and the advantages of the constructed harmonic images are summarized comparing with those of conventional ultrasonic images. The harmonic images are classified according to the mechanism of harmonic production, and the typical harmonic images obtained from patients are presented in contrast to the corresponding sonograms. Clinical significance and prospects of harmonic imaging and the future research areas are discussed.

• International Journal of Safety
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.17-22
• /
• 2008

Recent developments in contactless, air-coupled sensing of seismic and ultrasonic waves in concrete structures are presented. Contactless sensing allows for rapid, efficient and consistent data collection over a large volume of material. Two inspection applications are discussed: air-coupled impact-echo scanning of concrete structures using seismically generated waves, and air-coupled imaging of internal damages in concrete using ultrasonic tomography. The first application aims to locate and characterize shallow delamination defects within concrete bridge decks. Impact-echo method is applied to scan defected concrete slabs using air coupled sensors. Next, efforts to apply air-coupled ultrasonic tomography to concrete damage imaging are discussed. Preliminary results are presented for air-coupled ultrasonic tomography applied to solid elements to locate internal defects. The results demonstrate that, with continued development, air-coupled ultrasonic tomography may provide improved evaluation of unseen material defects within structures.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.34 no.6
• /
• pp.441-446
• /
• 2014

A 3D ultrasound image is desired in many medical examinations. However, the implementation of a 2D array, which is needed for a 3D image, is challenging with respect to fabrication, interconnection and cabling. A 2D sparse array, which needs fewer elements than a dense array, is a realistic way to achieve 3D images. Because the number of ways the elements can be placed in an array is extremely large, a method for optimizing the array configuration is needed. Previous research placed the target point far from the transducer array, making it impossible to optimize the array in the operating range. In our study, we focused on optimizing a 2D sparse array transducer for 3D imaging by using a simulated annealing method. We compared the far-field optimization method with the near-field optimization method by analyzing a point-spread function (PSF). The resolution of the optimized sparse array is comparable to that of the dense array.