• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.1553-1561
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• 2024

Nondestructive radiography using cosmic ray muons has been used for decades to monitor nuclear reactor and spent nuclear fuel storage. Because nuclear fuel assemblies are highly dense and large, typical radiation probes such as x-rays cannot penetrate these target imaging objects. Although cosmic ray muons are highly penetrative for nuclear fuels as a result of their relatively high energy, the wide application of muon tomography is limited because of naturally low cosmic ray muon flux. This work presents a new image reconstruction algorithm to maximize the utility of cosmic ray muon in tomography applications. Muon momentum information is used to improve imaging resolution, as well as muon scattering angle. In this work, a new convolution was introduced known as M-value, which is a mathematical integration of two measured quantities: scattering angle and momentum. It captures the objects' quantity and density in a way that is easy to use with image reconstruction algorithms. The results demonstrate how to reconstruct images when muon momentum measurements are included in a typical muon scattering tomography algorithm. Using M-value improves muon tomography image resolution by replacing the scattering angle value without increasing computation costs. This new algorithm is projected to be a standard nondestructive radiography technique for spent nuclear fuel and nuclear material management.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.342-348
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• 2013

In this paper, the evaluation method for the responsivity and noise characteristics of an infrared thermal imaging camera was presented. Signal transfer function and noise equivalent temperature difference of the infrared thermal imaging camera were obtained by using a differential mode blackbody that is able to control the temperature difference ${\Delta}$T between an infrared target and its background. And we verified the suitability of our evaluation method through comparison between the found noise equivalent temperature difference and the specification of the camera. In addition, the difference of 0.01 K of the two noise equivalent temperature differences calculated from with and without nonuniformity correction suggests that the nonuniformity correction is essential process for the evaluation of the infrared thermal imaging camera.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.484-493
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• 2012

Since the 1980s, there have been many research activities devoted to quantitatively characterizing and imaging human tissues based on sound speed, attenuation coefficient, density, nonlinear B/A parameter, etc., but those efforts have not yet reached the stage of commercialization. However, a new imaging technology termed elastography, which was proposed in the early 1980s, has recently been implemented in commercial clinical ultrasound scanners, and is now being used to diagnose prostates, breasts, thyroids, livers, blood vessels, etc., more quantitatively as a complementary adjunct modality to the conventional B-mode imaging. The purpose of this article is to introduce and review various elastographic algorithms for use in quasistatic or static compression type elasticity imaging modes. Most of the algorithms are based on the crosscorrelation or autocorrelation function methods, and the fundamental difference is that the time shift is estimated by changing the lag variable in the former, while it is directly obtained from the phase shift at a fixed lag in the latter.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.263-272
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• 2008

Many technical methods are used for nondestructive testing field for solid materials. Among those, ultrasonic inspection methods are widely used and one of the popular methods involves the extraction of an appropriate set of features followed by the use of a neural network for the classification of the signals in the feature space. This paper describes an approach which uses LMS method to determine the coordinates of the ultrasonic probe followed by the use of SAFT with centroid technique to estimate the location of the ultrasonic reflector. The method is employed for classifying UT-NDE signals from the steam generator tubes in a nuclear power plant. The classification results are presented for the ultrasonic signals from cracks and deposits within steam generator tubes.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.816-825
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• 2022

Nondestructive testing, which can monitor a product's interior without disassembly, is becoming increasingly essential for industrial inspection. Computed laminography (CL) is widely used in this application, as it can reconstruct a product, such as a printed circuit board, into a three-dimensional (3D) high-magnification image using X-rays. However, such high-magnification scanning environments can be affected by minute vibrations of the CL device, which can generate motion artifacts in the 3D reconstructed image. Since such vibrations are irregular, geometric corrections must be performed at every scan. In this paper, we propose a geometry calibration method that can correct the geometric information of CL scans based on the image without using geometry calibration phantoms. The proposed method compares the projection and digitally reconstructed radiography images to measure the geometric error. To validate the proposed method, we used both numerical phantom images at various magnifications and images obtained from real industrial CL equipment. The experiment results confirmed that sharpness and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were improved.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.08a
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• pp.475-478
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• 2006

In electrical impedance tomography (EIT) an array of electrodes is attached on the boundary of an object and small alternating currents are injected through these electrodes, and then the resulting voltages are measured. An estimation for the cross-sectional resistivity distribution in the object is obtained by using these current and voltage data in a nondestructive manner. In this paper, the electrical impedance imaging of two-phase flows undergoing rapid transient is considered with a special emphasis on the effect of the current pattern on the image reconstruction. The trigonometric current pattern, which is commonly used in the conventional static electrical impedance imaging, shows poor performance in case of the dynamic imaging considered in this work. Extensive numerical experiments are conducted with various kinds of current patterns and their effects on the image reconstruction performance are examined.

• Journal of the Korean Physical Society
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• v.73 no.11
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• pp.1644-1649
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• 2018

Aiming at infrared thermal images with different buried depth defects, we study a variety of image segmentation algorithms based on the threshold to develop global search ability and the ability to find the defect area accurately. Firstly, the iterative thresholding method, the maximum entropy method, the minimum error method, the Ostu method and the minimum skewness method are applied to image segmentation of the same infrared thermal image. The study shows that the maximum entropy method and the minimum error method have strong global search capability and can simultaneously extract defects at different depths. However none of these five methods can accurately calculate the defect area at different depths. In order to solve this problem, we put forward a strategy of "divide and conquer". The infrared thermal image is divided into several local thermal maps, with each map containing only one defect, and the defect area is calculated after local image processing of the different buried defects one by one. The results show that, under the "divide and conquer" strategy, the iterative threshold method and the Ostu method have the advantage of high precision and can accurately extract the area of different defects at different depths, with an error of less than 5%.

• Current Optics and Photonics
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.315-323
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• 2018

A new multiple-image encryption scheme that is based on a compressive ghost imaging concept along with a Fourier transform sampling principle has been proposed. This further improves the security of the scheme. The scheme adopts a Fourier transform to sample the original multiple-image information respectively, utilizing the centrosymmetric conjugation property of the spatial spectrum of the images to obtain each Fourier coefficient in the most abundant spatial frequency band. Based on this sampling principle, the multiple images to be encrypted are grouped into a combined image, and then the compressive ghost imaging algorithm is used to improve the security, which reduces the amount of information transmission and improves the information transmission rate. Due to the presence of the compressive sensing algorithm, the scheme improves the accuracy of image reconstruction.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.11-24
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• 2022

X-ray detection has widely been applied in medical diagnostics, security screening, nondestructive testing in the industry, etc. Medical X-ray imaging procedures require digital flat detectors operating with low doses to reduce radiation health risks. Recently, metal halide perovskites (MHPs) have shown great potential in high-performance X-ray detection because of their attractive properties, such as strong X-ray absorption, high mobility-lifetime product, tunable bandgap, low-temperature fabrication, near-unity photoluminescence quantum yields, and fast photoresponse. In this paper, we review and introduce the development status of new perovskite X-ray detectors and imaging, which have emerged as a new promising high-sensitivity X-ray detection technology. We discuss the latest progress and future perspective of MHP-based X-ray detection in medical imaging. Finally, we compare the conventional detection methods with quantum-enhanced detection, pointing out the challenges and perspectives for future research directions toward perovskite-based X-ray applications.

• Composites Research
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.288-292
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• 2016

In this paper, a novel ultrasonic propagation imaging system, called a full-field pulse-echo ultrasonic propagation imaging (FF PE UPI) system is introduced. The system nondestructively inspected targets with two-axis translation stage. The coincident laser beams for ultrasonic sensing and generation are scanned and pulse-echo mode laser ultrasounds are captured. This procedure makes it possible to generate full-field ultrasound in through-the-thickness direction as large as the scan area. Structural inspection results in the form of full-field ultrasonic wave propagation videos are introduced, which are painted sandwich control surfaces. In addition, the inspection results of FF PE UPI system are compared with conventional ultrasonic testing methods such as waterjet and portable C-scan.