• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.168-180
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• 2024

In this study, we developed a STEAM program based on digital astronomical and space resources and applied it to 167 randomly selected elementary school students to examine the effectiveness of the STEAM program in enhancing creative problem solving skills. The results of this study are as follows: first, the statistical analysis of pre-test and post-test scores for creative problem-solving skills related to the STEAM program showed significant results (p<.05). This suggests that the STEAM program contributed to improving creative problem-solving skills through the procedural process involved in generating ideas and convergent thinking during the digital problem-solving. Second, the paired sample t-test based on the pre-test and post-test of the STEAM attitude test also showed significant results (p<.05). Analyzing digital materials and presenting pixel art projects positively influenced STEAM attitudes in terms of interest, communication, and usefulness. This underscores the need for developing integrative education programs utilizing advanced technologies in the future. Third, in the class satisfaction test conducted after the application of the STEAM program, the satisfaction factor scored an average of 3.55, interest scored 3.35, and overall class difficulty scored 3.46. The main difference from traditional classes was the focus on 'acquisition of future career information.' However, given the slight decrease in interest during the digital transformation and interpretation process, it is recommended that future classes allocate sufficient time for experiential activities. To generalize the developed program, future studies should consider various school levels, implementation periods, and difficulty levels.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.72-79
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• 2009

Scatter correction for I-131 plays a very important role to improve image quality and quantitation. I-131 has multiple and higher energy gamma-ray emissions. Image quality and quantitative accuracy in I-131 imaging are degraded by object scatter as well as scatter and septal penetration in the collimator. The purpose of this study was to estimate scatter and septal penetration and investigate two scatter correction methods using Monte Carlo simulation. The gamma camera system simulated in this study was a FORTE system (Phillips, Nederland) with high energy, general-purpose, parallel hole collimator. We simulated for two types of high energy collimators. One is composed of lead, and the other is composed of artificially high Z number and high density. We simulated energy spectrum using a point source in air. We estimated both full width at half maximum (FWHM) and full width at tenth maximum (FWTM) using line spread function (LSF) in cylindrical water phantom. We applied two scatter correction methods, triple energy window scatter correction (TEW) and extended triple energy window scatter correction (ETEW). The TEW method is a pixel-by pixel based correction which is easy to implement clinically. The ETEW is a modification of the TEW which corrects for scatter by using abutted scatter rejection window, which can overestimate or the underestimate scatter. The both FWHM and FWTM were estimated as 41.2 mm and 206.5 mm for lead collimator, respectively. The FWHM and FWTM were estimated as 27.3 mm and 45.6 mm for artificially high Z and high density collimator, respectively. ETEW showed that the estimation of scatter components was close to the true scatter components. In conclusion, correction for septal penetration and scatter is important to improve image quality and quantitative accuracy in I-131 imaging. The ETEW method in scatter correction appeared to be useful in I-131 imaging.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.6_1
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• pp.1283-1297
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• 2023

Mid-wave infrared (MWIR) imagery, due to its ability to capture the temperature of land cover and objects, serves as a crucial data source in various fields including environmental monitoring and defense. The KOMPSAT-3A satellite acquires MWIR imagery with high spatial resolution compared to other satellites. However, the limited spatial resolution of MWIR imagery, in comparison to electro-optical (EO) imagery, constrains the optimal utilization of the KOMPSAT-3A data. This study aims to create a highly visible MWIR fusion image by leveraging the edge information from the KOMPSAT-3A panchromatic (PAN) image. Preprocessing is implemented to mitigate the relative geometric errors between the PAN and MWIR images. Subsequently, we employ a pre-trained pixel difference network (PiDiNet), a deep learning-based edge information extraction technique, to extract the boundaries of objects from the preprocessed PAN images. The MWIR fusion imagery is then generated by emphasizing the brightness value corresponding to the edge information of the PAN image. To evaluate the proposed method, the MWIR fusion images were generated in three different sites. As a result, the boundaries of terrain and objects in the MWIR fusion images were emphasized to provide detailed thermal information of the interest area. Especially, the MWIR fusion image provided the thermal information of objects such as airplanes and ships which are hard to detect in the original MWIR images. This study demonstrated that the proposed method could generate a single image that combines visible details from an EO image and thermal information from an MWIR image, which contributes to increasing the usage of MWIR imagery.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.162-170
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• 2013

Dedicated single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) systems based on pixelated semiconductors are being developed for studying small animal models of human disease. To clarify the possibility of using a SPECT system with CdTe for a high resolution low-dose small animal imaging, we compared the quality of reconstructed images from pixelated CdTe detector to those from a small SPECT system with NaI(Tl). The CdTe detector was $44.8{\times}44.8$ mm and the pixels were $0.35{\times}0.35{\times}5$ mm. The intrinsic resolution of the detector was 0.35 mm, which is equal to the pixel size. GATE simulations were performed to assess the image quality of both SPECT systems. The spatial resolutions and sensitivities for both systems were evaluated using a 10 MBq $^{99m}Tc$ point source. The quantitative comparison with different injected dose was performed using a voxelized MOBY phantom, and the absorbed doses for each organ were evaluated. The spatial resolution of the SPECT with NaI(Tl) was about 1.54 mm FWHM, while that of the SPECT with a CdTe detector was about 1.32 mm FWHM at 30 mm. The sensitivity of NaI(Tl) based SPECT was 83 cps/MBq, while that of the CdTe detector based SPECT was 116 cps/MBq at 30 mm. The image statistics were evaluated by calculating the CNR of the image from both systems. When the injected activity for the striatum in the mouse brain was 160 Bq/voxel, the CNR of CdTe based SPECT was 2.30 while that of NaI(Tl) based SPECT was 1.85. The CNR of SPECT with CdTe was overall higher than that of the NaI(Tl) based SPECT. In addition, the absorbed dose was higher from SPECT with CdTe than those from NaI(Tl) based SPECT to acquire the same quantitative values. Our simulation results indicated that the SPECT with CdTe detector showed overall high performance compared to the SPECT with NaI(Tl). Even though the validation study is needed, the SPECT system with CdTe detector appeared to be feasible for high resolution low-dose small animal imaging.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.2_2
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• pp.377-391
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• 2018

In order to efficiently monitor red tide over a wide range, the need for red tide detection using remote sensing is increasing. However, the previous studies focus on the development of red tide detection algorithm for ocean colour sensor. In this study, we propose the use of multi-sensor to improve the inaccuracy for red tide detection and remote sensing data in coastal areas with high turbidity, which are pointed out as limitations of satellite-based red tide monitoring. The study area were selected based on the red tide information provided by National Institute of Fisheries Science, and spatial fusion and spectral-based fusion were attempted using GOCI image as ocean colour sensor and Landsat OLI image as terrestrial sensor. Through spatial fusion of the two images, both the red tide of the coastal area and the outer sea areas, where the quality of Landsat OLI image was low, which were impossible to observe in GOCI images, showed improved detection results. As a result of spectral-based fusion performed by feature-level and rawdata-level, there was no significant difference in red tide distribution patterns derived from the two methods. However, in the feature-level method, the red tide area tends to overestimated as spatial resolution of the image low. As a result of pixel segmentation by linear spectral unmixing method, the difference in the red tide area was found to increase as the number of pixels with low red tide ratio increased. For rawdata-level, Gram-Schmidt sharpening method estimated a somewhat larger area than PC spectral sharpening method, but no significant difference was observed. In this study, it is shown that coastal red tide with high turbidity as well as outer sea areas can be detected through spatial fusion of ocean colour and terrestrial sensor. Also, by presenting various spectral-based fusion methods, more accurate red tide area estimation method is suggested. It is expected that this result will provide more precise detection of red tide around the Korean peninsula and accurate red tide area information needed to determine countermeasure to effectively control red tide.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.452-458
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• 2010

In case of an embedded system with computing resource restrictions such as system power and cpu, the overhead due to displaying data on the computer screen may have a significant influence on the system performance. This paper describes an initialization method for LCD-driving components such as an ARM Core, an LCD controller, and an SPI(serial peripheral interface). It also introduces a pixel display function and a panel display method using virtual screen for reducing the display overhead for an LN2440SBC system with an ARM9-based S3C2440A microprocessor. A virtual screen is a large space of computer memories allocated much larger than those needed for one-time display of an image. Displaying a specific region of a virtual screen is done by assigning it as a view-port region. Such a display is useful in an embedded system when concurrently running tasks produce and display their respective results on the screen; it is especially so when the execution result of each task is partially modified, instead of being totally modified, on its turn and displayed. If the tasks running on such a system divide and make efficient use of the region of the virtual screen, the display overhead can be minimized. For the performance comparison with and without using the virtual screen, two different images are displayed in turn and the amount of time consumed for their display is measured. The result shows that the display time of the former is about 5 times faster than that of the latter.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.7-14
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• 2016

Radiopharmaceutical agents for positron emission tomography (PET), such as $^{18}F$-FDG and $^{68}Ga$, have been used not only for whole-body PET imaging but also for intraoperative radionuclide-guided surgery due to their quantitative and sensitive imaging characteristics. Current intraoperative probes detect gamma or beta particles, but not both of them. Gamma probes have low sensitivities since a collimator has to be used to reduce backgrounds. Positron probes have a high tumor-to-background ratio, but they have a 1-2 mm depth limitation from the body surface. Most of current intraoperative probes produce only audible sounds proportional to count rates without providing tumor images. This research aims to detect both positrons and annihilation photons from $^{18}F$ using plastic scintillators and a GAGG scintillation crystal attached to silicon photomultiplier (SiPM). The depth-of-interaction (DOI) along the plastic scintillator can be used to obtain the 2-D images of tumors near the body surface. The front and rear part of the intraoperative probe consists of $4{\times}1$ plastic scintillators ($2.9{\times}2.0{\times}12.0mm^3$) for positron detection and a Ce:GAGG scintillation crystal ($12.0{\times}12.0{\times}9.0mm^3$) for annihilation photon detection, respectively. The DOI resolution of $4.4{\pm}1.6mm$ along the plastic scintillator was obtained by using the 3M enhanced specular reflector (ESR) with rectangular holes between the plastic scintillators, which showed the feasibility of a 2-D image pixel size of $2.9{\times}4.4mm^2$ (X-direction ${\times}$ Y-direction).

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.21-29
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• 2016

Cell segmentation is an important but time-consuming and laborious task in biological image analysis. An automated, robust, and fast method is required to overcome such burdensome processes. These needs are, however, challenging due to various cell shapes, intensity, and incomplete boundaries. A precise cell segmentation will allow to making a pathological diagnosis of tissue samples. A vast body of literature exists on cell segmentation in microscopy images [1]. The majority of existing work is based on input images and predefined feature models only - for example, using a deformable model to extract edge boundaries in the image. Only a handful of recent methods employ data-driven approaches, such as supervised learning. In this paper, we propose a novel data-driven cell segmentation algorithm for bright-field microscopy images. The proposed method minimizes an energy formula defined by two dictionaries - one is for input images and the other is for their manual segmentation results - and a common sparse code, which aims to find the pixel-level classification by deploying the learned dictionaries on new images. In contrast to deformable models, we do not need to know a prior knowledge of objects. We also employed convolutional sparse coding and Alternating Direction of Multiplier Method (ADMM) for fast dictionary learning and energy minimization. Unlike an existing method [1], our method trains both dictionaries concurrently, and is implemented using the GPU device for faster performance.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.587-596
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• 2012

Verifying about eligibility of targeted site is necessary for execute Afforestation and Reforestation Clean Development Mechanism (A/R CDM) project which is followed by system of Kyoto protocol. The site have to be identified by which could not be in conformity with definition of forest. This study tried to propose a technology of classify for site selection of A/R CDM. We chose several parts of Yangpyeng as study area and applied LiDAR data and remotely sensed imagery for considering about tree height, degree of crown closure, and land area which 3 factors for identify forest. LiDAR data was used for offset the shortage of remotely sensed imagery that cannot perfectly determine the forest definition due to absence of 3-dimentional information, but can be obtained from LiDAR. Considering tree height, degree of crown closure, and land area simultaneously by moving window, classified fields to forest and non forest based on pixel size. As a result, 124.06 ha for suitable to doing plantation and approximately 357.02 ha are in negative. Technology that applied for analyzing will provide fundamental methodology not only site selection for A/R CDM, but will be utilized in other Kyoto protocol.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.17B no.1
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• pp.47-54
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• 2010

Old archived film shows two major defects: line scratch and blobs. In this paper, we present a design and implementation of an automatic video restoration system for line scratches observed in archived film. We use autoregressive (AR) image model because we can make stochastic and specifically autoregressive image generation process with our PAST-PRESENT model and Sampling Pattern. We designed locality maximizing scanning pattern, which can generate nearly stationary time-like series of pixels, which is a strong requirement for a stochastic series to be autoregressive. The sampled pixel series undergoes filtering and model fitting using Durbin-Levinson algorithm before interpolation process. We designed three-stage film restoration system, which includes (1) film acquisition from VHS tapes, (2) simple line scratch detection and restoration, and (3) manual blob identification and sophisticated inpainting scheme. We implemented film acquisition and simple inpainting scheme on Texas Instruments DSP board TMS320DM642 EVM, and implemented our AR inpainting scheme on PC for sophisticated restoration. We experimented our scheme with two old Korean films: "Viva Freedom" and "Robot Tae-Kwon-V", and the experimental results show that our scheme improves Bertalmio's scheme for subjective quality (MOS), objective quality (PSNR), and especially restoration ratio (RR), which reflects how much similar to the manual inpainting results.