• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.43-51
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• 2010

Attenuation coefficients of medical ultrasound not only reflect the pathological information of tissues scanned but also provide the quantitative information to compensate the decay of backscattered signals for other medical ultrasound parameters. Based on the frequency-selective attenuation property of human tissues, attenuation estimation methods in spectral domain have difficulties for real-time implementation due to the complexicity while estimation methods in time domain do not achieve the compensation for the diffraction effect effectively. In this paper, we propose the modified VSA method, which compensates the diffraction with reference phantom in time domain, using adaptive bandpass filters with decreasing center frequencies along depths. The adaptive bandpass filtering technique minimizes the distortion of relative echogenicity of wideband transmit pulses and maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio due to the random scattering, especially at deeper depths. Since the filtering center frequencies change according to the accumulated attenuation, the proposed algorithm improves estimation accuracy and precision comparing to the fixed filtering method. Computer simulation and experimental results using tissue-mimicking phantoms demonstrate that the distortion of relative echogenicity is decreased at deeper depths, and the accuracy of attenuation estimation is improved by 5.1% and the standard deviation is decreased by 46.9% for the entire scan depth.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.134-140
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• 2015

Traditional moxibustion therapy can cause severe pain and leave scarring burns at the moxibustion site as it relies on the practitioner's subjective and qualitative treatment. Recently, ultrasound therapy has received attention as an alternative to moxibustion therapy owing to its objectiveness and quantitative nature. However, in order to convert ultrasound energy into heat energy, there is a need to precisely understand the ultrasound-focusing characteristics of the acoustic lens. Therefore, in this study, an FEM simulation was performed for acoustic lenses with different geometries a concave lens and zone lens as the geometry critically influences ultrasound focusing. The acoustic pressure field, amplitude, and focal point were also calculated. Furthermore, the performance of the fabricated acoustic lens was verified by a sound pressure measurement experiment.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.26 no.7
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• pp.956-962
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• 2022

Diffuse thyroid disease has ambiguous diagnostic criteria and many errors occur according to the subjective diagnosis of skilled practitioners. If image processing technology is applied to ultrasound images, quantitative data is extracted, and applied to a computer auxiliary diagnostic system, more accurate and political diagnosis is possible. In this paper, 19 parameters were extracted by applying the Gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) algorithm to ultrasound images classified as normal, mild, and moderate in patients with thyroid disease. Using these parameters, an artificial neural network (ANN) was applied to analyze diffuse thyroid ultrasound images. The final classification rate using ANN was 96.9%. Using the results of the study, it is expected that errors caused by visual reading in the diagnosis of thyroid diseases can be reduced and used as a secondary means of diagnosing diffuse thyroid diseases.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.422-428
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• 2023

Ultrafast ultrasound imaging has been applied to various imaging approaches, including shear wave elastography, ultrafast Doppler, and super-resolution imaging. However, these methods are still challenging in real-time implementation for three Dimension (3D) or portable applications because of their massive data rate required. In this paper, we proposed an adaptive quantization method that effectively reduces the data rate of large Radio Frequency (RF) data. In soft tissue, ultrasound backscatter signals require a high dynamic range, and thus typical quantization used in the current systems uses the quantization level of 10 bits to 14 bits. To alleviate the quantization level to expand the application of ultrafast ultrasound imaging, this study proposed a depth-sectional quantization approach that reduces the quantization errors. For quantitative evaluation, Field II simulations, phantom experiments, and in vivo imaging were conducted and CNR, spatial resolution, and SSIM values were compared with the proposed method and fixed quantization method. We demonstrated that our proposed method is capable of effectively reducing the quantization level down to 3-bit while minimizing the image quality degradation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.157-165
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• 2023

Ultrasound imaging uses sound waves of frequencies to cause physical actions such as reflection, absorption, refraction, and transmission at the edge between different tissues. Improvement is needed because there is a lot of noise due to the characteristics of the data generated from the ultrasound equipment, and it is difficult to grasp the shape of the tissue to be actually observed because the edge is vague. The edge enhancement method is used as a method to solve the case where the edge surface looks clumped due to a decrease in image quality. In this paper, as a method to strengthen the interface, the quality improvement was confirmed by strengthening the interface, which is the high-frequency part, in each image using an unsharpening mask and high boost. The mask filtering used for each image was evaluated by measuring PSNR and SNR. Abdominal, head, heart, liver, kidney, breast, and fetal images were obtained from Philips epiq5g and affiniti70g and Alpinion E-cube 15 ultrasound equipment. The program used to implement the algorithm was implemented with MATLAB R2022a of MathWorks. The unsharpening and high-boost mask array size was set to 3*3, and the laplacian filter, a spatial filter used to create outline-enhanced images, was applied equally to both masks. ImageJ program was used for quantitative evaluation of image quality. As a result of applying the mask filter to various ultrasound images, the subjective image quality showed that the overall contour lines of the image were clearly visible when unsharpening and high-boost mask were applied to the original image. When comparing the quantitative image quality, the image quality of the image to which the unsharpening mask and the high boost mask were applied was evaluated higher than that of the original image. In the portal vein, head, gallbladder, and kidney images, the SNR, PSNR, RMSE and MAE of the image to which the high-boost mask was applied were measured to be high. Conversely, for images of the heart, breast, and fetus, SNR, PSNR, RMSE and MAE values were measured as images with the unsharpening mask applied. It is thought that using the optimal mask according to the image will help to improve the image quality, and the contour information was provided to improve the image quality.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
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• v.29B no.11
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• pp.16-21
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• 1992

The validity of the application of the second-order Born equation to the ultrasound tomography algorithm is studied by comparing the scattered fields computed using the first-order Born equation, the first-order Rytove equation, and the second-order Born equation. The second-order Born equation turns out to provide more desirable results than the other two equations for a certain group of test objects. Phantom images with resolutions upto 1 pixel$\times$1 pixel are satisfactorily reconstructed using the second-order Born equation. It is shown that when the view angle is limited, good resonstruction results are also obtained using multi-frequency incident fields.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.33-38
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• 1992

A new approach to texture classification for quantitative ultrasound liver diagnosis using run difference matrix was developed. The run difference matrix comprised the gray level difference along with a distances. From this run difference matrix, we defined several vectors and parameters such as DOD, DGD, DAD vector, SHP, SMO, SMG, LDE, LDEL etc. Each parameter values calculated in fatty, cirrhotic, normal and chronic hepatitic liver images were plotted in a plane and we found that RDM method was more sensitive to small structural changes than the conventional run length method and showed improved classification ability between the diseases.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.249-254
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• 1991

In the study on the quantitative diagnosis using ultrasound, the stability and precision of tissue characterized parameters are important for the clinical application. We estimate attenuation coefficient introducing homomorphlc process Into the modified spectral differnce method about silicon-madu phantom. We compare the results with those estimated uslng the method used for obtaining the attenuation map image before. Homomorphic process has the effect smoothing the reflected echo signal spectrum, therefore eliminat os the random pattern of the signal spectrum generated by the scatterers. As a result, it Is shown that the stability is enhanced

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.536-545
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• 2005

This study was conducted to investigate osteopenia and osteoporosis prevalence of radius and tibia using Quantitative Ultrasound (QUS) and to identify affecting factors of osteoporosis. A total of 4,340 women aged 40 - 69 years, living in Ansung (rural) and Ansan (mid-sized) area, and free of illnesses affecting bone metabolism participated in the community-based cohort study. Among them 4,059 subjects measured radius bone density and 4,089 measured tibia. The T-score threshold, defined as < -1.0 and $\le$-2.5, was used to identify subjects with osteopenia and osteoporosis by WHO criteria. The crude prevalence of osteoporosis in radius and tibia was $8.4\%$ and $23.3\%$ respectively; after adjustment for age, it changed $6.3\%$ and $18.8\%$. In simple logistic regression analysis, the prevalence of osteoporosis increased by aging, non-marital status, low education, low income. Otherwise, high intakes of Ca/P, thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin B6, and vitamin E were decreased osteoporosis prevalence. Compared to the normal BMI (body mass index) group 08.5 $\le$ BMI < 23), the odds ratio (ORs) of the low BMI group (BMI < 18.5), and high BMI groups (BMl25-30, BMI $\ge$ 30) were significantly increased. The OR of osteoporosis decreased across increasing quartiles of intakes of Ca, P and Ca/P. Therefore, maintaining normal BMI and increasing Ca intake and Ca/P ratio may have a beneficial effect on bone health of Korean women.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.250-257
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• 2007

Functional gastrointestinal disorders affect millions of people of all age regardless of race and sex. There are, however, rare diagnostic methods for the functional gastrointestinal disorders because functional disorders show no evidence of organic and physical causes. Our research group identified recently that the gastrointestinal tract well in the patients with the functional gastrointestinal disorders becomes more rigid than healthy people when palpating the abdominal regions overlaying the gastrointestinal tract. The aim is, therefore, to develop a diagnostic method for the functional gastrointestinal disorders based on quantitative measurement of the rigidity of the gastrointestinal tract well using ultrasound technique. For this purpose, a preliminary ultrasound diagnostic system was developed and verified through phantom tests. The system consisted of transmitter, ultrasonic transducer, receiver, TGC, and CPLD, and verified via a phantom test. For the phantom test, ten soft-tissue specimens were harvested from porcine. Five of them were then treated chemically to mimic a rigid condition of gastrointestinal tract well, which was induced by functional gastrointestinal disorders. Additionally, the specimens were tested mechanically to identify if the mimic was reasonable. The customized ultrasound system was finally verified through application to human subjects with/without functional gastrointestinal disorders(Normal and Patient Groups). It was identified from the mechanical test that the chemically treated specimens were more rigid than normalspecimen. This finding was favorably compared with the result obtained from the phantom test. The phantom test also showed that ultrasound system well described the specimen geometric characteristics and detected an alteration in the specimens. The maximum amplitude of the ultrasonic reflective signal in the rigid specimens $(0.2{\pm}0.1Vp-p)$ at the interface between the fat and muscle layers was explicitly higher than that in the normal specimens $(0.1{\pm}0.0Vp-p)$ (p<0.05). Clinical tests using our customized ultrasound system for human subject showed that the maximum amplitudes of the ultrasonic reflective signals nea. to the gastrointestinal tract well for the patient group$(2.6{\pm}0.3Vp-p)$ were generally higher than those in normal group$(0.1{\pm}0.2Vp-p)$ (p<0.05). These results suggest that newly designed diagnostic system based on ultrasound technique may diagnose enough the functional gastrointestinal disorders.