• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.67-71
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• 2001

Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is a blind source separation method using unsupervised learning and mutual information theory created in the late eighties and developed in the nineties. It has already succeeded in separating eye movement artifacts from human scalp EEG recording. Several characteristic sleep waves such as sleep spindle, K-complex, and positive occipital sharp transient of sleep (POSTS) can be recorded during sleep EEG recording. They are used as stage determining factors of sleep staging and might be reflections of unknown neural sources during sleep. We applied the ICA method to sleep EEG for sleep waves separation. Eighteen channel scalp longitudinal bipolar montage was used for the EEG recording. With the sampling rate of 256Hz, digital EEG data were converted into 18 by n matrix which was used as a original data matrix X. Independent source matrix U (18 by n) was obtained by independent component analysis method ($U=W{\timex}X$, where W is an 18 by 18 matrix obtained by ICA procedures). ICA was applied to the original EEG containing sleep spindle, K-complex, and POSTS. Among the 18 independent components, those containing characteristic shape of sleep waves could be identified. Each independent component was reconstructed into original montage by the product of inverse matrix of W (inv(W)) and U. The reconstructed EEG might be a separation of sleep waves without other components of original EEG matrix X. This result (might) demonstrates that characteristic sleep waves may be separated from original EEG of unknown mixed neural origins by the Independent Component Analysis (ICA) method.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.16 no.7
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• pp.2328-2344
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• 2022

2D human pose estimation still faces difficulty in low-resolution images. Most existing top-down approaches scale up the target human bonding box images to the large size and insert the scaled image into the network. Due to up-sampling, artifacts occur in the low-resolution target images, and the degraded images adversely affect the accurate estimation of the joint positions. To address this issue, we propose a multi-resolution input feature fusion network for human pose estimation. Specifically, the bounding box image of the target human is rescaled to multiple input images of various sizes, and the features extracted from the multiple images are fused in the network. Moreover, we introduce a guiding channel which induces the multi-resolution input features to alternatively affect the network according to the resolution of the target image. We conduct experiments on MS COCO dataset which is a representative dataset for 2D human pose estimation, where our method achieves superior performance compared to the strong baseline HRNet and the previous state-of-the-art methods.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.173-198
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• 2016

Financial distress can damage stakeholders and even lead to significant social costs. Thus, financial distress prediction is an important issue in macroeconomics. However, most existing studies on building a financial distress prediction model have only considered idiosyncratic risk factors without considering systematic risk factors. In this study, we propose a prediction model that considers both the idiosyncratic risk based on a financial ratio and the systematic risk based on a business cycle. Ultimately, we build several IT artifacts associated with financial ratio and add them to the idiosyncratic risk factors as well as address the imbalanced data problem by using an oversampling technique and synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) to ensure good performance. When considering systematic risk, our study ensures that each data set consists of both financially distressed companies and financially sound companies in each business cycle phase. We conducted several experiments that change the initial imbalanced sample ratio between the two company groups into a 1:1 sample ratio using SMOTE and compared the prediction results from the individual data set. We also predicted data sets from the subsequent business cycle phase as a test set through a built prediction model that used business contraction phase data sets, and then we compared previous prediction performance and subsequent prediction performance. Thus, our findings can provide insights into making rational decisions for stakeholders that are experiencing an economic crisis.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.142-145
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• 2005

Since the successful launch of FORMOSAT -2 satellite by National Space Organization of Taiwan in May 2004, the Remote Sensing Instrument (RSI) on- board the FORMOSAT -2 has continuously acquired images at one panchromatic and four multi-spectral bands (http://www.nspo.org.tw). In general, the RSI performs well and receives high quality images which proved to be very useful for various applications. However, some RSI panchromatic products exhibit obvious trembling artifact that must be removed. Preliminary study reveals that the trembling artifact is caused by the instability of the spacecraft attitude. Though the magnitude of this artifact is actually less than half of a pixel, it affects the applicability of panchromatic products. A procedure removing this artifact is therefore needed for providing image products of consistent quality. Due to the nature of trembling artifact, it is impossible to describe the trembling amount by employing an analytic model. Relied only on image itself, an algorithm determining trembling amount and removing accordingly the trembling artifact is proposed. The algorithm consists of 3 stages. First, a cross-correlation based scheme is used to measure the relative shift between adjacent scan lines. Follows, the trembling amount is estimated from the measured value. For this purpose, the Fourier transform is utilized to characterize random shifts in frequency domain. An adaptive estimation method is then applied to deduce the approximate trembling amount. In the subsequent stage, image re-sampling operation is applied to restore the trembling-free product. Experimental results show that by applying the proposed algorithm, the unpleasant trembling artifact is no longer evident.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.10-20
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• 2013

Nowadays, video technology has been successfully improved creating tremendous results. As video technology improve, multimedia devices and demands from users are diversified. Therefore, a video codec used in these devices should support various displays with different resolutions. The technology to generate a higher resolution image from the associated low-resolution image is called interpolation. Interpolation is generally performed in either the spatial domain or the DCT domain. To use the advantages of both domains, we have proposed the new adaptive interpolation algorithm based on edge direction, which adaptively exploits the advantages of both domains. The experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm performs well in terms of PSNR and reduces the blocking artifacts.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.419-431
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• 2000

In this paper, a new beamforming technique is proposed, which can completely eliminate all the artifacts caused by digital scan converter. In the proposed method, named display-pixel-based focusing(DPBF) by the authors, ultrasound waves are focused directly at the display pixels instead of sampling points on the polar coordinate. Consequently. the DPBF system does not require the digital scan converter. To verify the proposed method, we modified a commercial scanner and performed experiments with a 3.5 MHz convex array and a 7.5 MHz linear array. We also defined and measured ICRA/B(Image Coarseness Ratio) to compare the image quality quantitatively. The experimental results with in vivo and in vitro data show that the proposed method improves the ICRA/B considerably, resulting in much smoother and finer images.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.151-159
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• 2014

Computed tomography (CT) is one of the most widely used medical imaging modality. However, substantial x-ray dose exposed to the human subject during the CT scan is a great concern. Region-of-interest (ROI) CT is considered to be a possible solution for its potential to reduce the x-ray dose to the human subject. In most of ROI-CT scans, the ROI is set to a circular shape whose diameter is often considerably smaller than the full field-of-view (FOV). However, an arbitrarily shaped ROI is very desirable to reduce the x-ray dose more than the circularly shaped ROI can do. We propose a new method to make a non-circular convex-shaped ROI along with the image reconstruction method. To make a ROI with an arbitrary convex shape, dynamic collimations are necessary to minimize the x-ray dose at each angle of view. In addition to the dynamic collimation, we get the ROI projection data with slightly lower sampling rate in the view direction to further reduce the x-ray dose. We reconstruct images from the ROI projection data in the compressed sensing (CS) framework assisted by the exterior projection data acquired from the pilot scan to set the ROI. To validate the proposed method, we used the experimental micro-CT projection data after truncating them to simulate the dynamic collimation. The reconstructed ROI images showed little errors as compared to the images reconstructed from the full-FOV scan data as well as little artifacts inside the ROI. We expect the proposed method can significantly reduce the x-ray dose in CT scans if the dynamic collimation is realized in real CT machines.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.347-359
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• 2010

Ortho-photos provide valuable spatial and spectral information for various Geographic Information System (GIS) and mapping applications. The absence of relief displacement and the uniform scale in ortho-photos enable interested users to measure distances, compute areas, derive geographic locations, and quantify changes. Differential rectification has traditionally been used for ortho-photo generation. However, differential rectification produces serious problems (in the form of ghost images) when dealing with large scale imagery over urban areas. To avoid these artifacts, true ortho-photo generation techniques have been devised to remove ghost images through visibility analysis and occlusion detection. So far, the Z-buffer method has been one of the most popular methods for true ortho-photo generation. However, it is quite sensitive to the relationship between the cell size of the Digital Surface Model (DSM) and the Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) of the imaging sensor. Another critical issue of true ortho-photo generation using high resolution satellite imagery is the scan line search. In other words, the perspective center corresponding to each ground point should be identified since we are dealing with a line camera. This paper introduces alternative methodology for true ortho-photo generation that circumvents the drawbacks of the Z-buffer technique and the existing scan line search methods. The experiments using real data are carried out while comparing the performance of the proposed and the existing methods through qualitative and quantitative evaluations and computational efficiency. The experimental analysis proved that the proposed method provided the best success ratio of the occlusion detection and had reasonable processing time compared to all other true ortho-photo generation methods tested in this paper.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.257-273
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to describe how one woman became a science docent's exper and how she developed expertise in her field of work as a docent in science museum. A life history approach, one of the qualitative research methods was employed in this study. A docent Ms. Park, had her career as a docent for eight years and she was selected through the procedures as follows. The $1^{st}$ phase of selection, the researcher contacted 56 docents who were working using a convenience sampling method. In the $2^{nd}$ phase of selection, 11 of them were then selected on purpose for further study. Finally docent Paek was selected as a case for this study on the basis of her responses to survey questions and interviews as well as her willingness to participate. Research data were collected through mainly interviews, participant observations, and docents' artifacts. We analyzed data to reveal Ms-Park's life history of how she became a docent, how her work was as a docent, and what efforts she made to become an expert as a docent of science museum. Findings are as follows. First, docent Park demonstrated strong educational beliefs that influenced her field work, as the beliefs have continuously been formed throughout her life experiences. Second, she acquired and organized her practical knowledge of exhibit interpretation through real activities and experiences interacting whith visitors and demonstrating exhibits in science museums. Third, docent Park showed her ability to make full use of surroundings and resources available for developing her expertise on exhibit interpretation more effectively. With these findings in mind, we suggest that a well established docent system as well as its operation, and physical support be needed for increased docents' expertise and meaningful education in science museum.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.523-538
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• 2009

Recently, there has been a keen demand for real-time automatic monitoring of VOCs not only in Korea but other developed countries. We carried out this study to evaluate and to optimize the performance of a continuous automatic monitoring system for hazardous VOCs (HVOCs) in the ambient atmosphere, using an on-line GC system. The online system normally consisted of a Nafion dryer prior to a cold trap of an automatic thermal desorption apparatus and a GC system equipped with two detectors, i.e. PID and ECD. Preliminary tests conducted to check out any contamination of the system revealed an evidence of significant artifact formation of benzene, and it was found that the Nafion dryer (even brand new one) is the source of the benzene artifact. Thus, all the subsequent experiments in this study was carried out inevitably by removing the Nafion dryer. The on-line GC method was investigated with a variety of QC/QA performance criteria such as repeatability, linearity, lower detection limits, and accuracy. In order to find out the best operating condition for the on-line GC system, three different types (in terms of adsorption strength) of cold trap combinations were tested, i.e. (i) Tenax-TA and Carbopack-B combination (weak and hydrophobic); (ii) Tenax-TA, Carbopack-X and Carboxen-1000 combination (strong and hydrophilic); and (iii) Tenax-TA and Carbopack-X combination (medium and hydrophobic/hydrophilic). The USEPA TO-17 manual method was selected as a reference method to evaluate the performance of the on-line method. A series of experiments revealed that the system performance was superior to others when a cold trap packed with hydrophilic adsorbents (Tenax-TA/Carbopack-X/Carboxen-1000 combination) was used and operated at $25^{\circ}C$. However, the system with a cold trap packed with a combination of Tenax-TA and Carbopack-X is more recommended for field applications since the carboxen-1000 adsorbent is too sensitive to water vapor, and hence the performance of the system might be very unstable to humid samples or during rainy days. Furthermore, the precision and accuracy criteria of the Tenax-TA/ Carbopack-X combination were generally compatible with the triple adsorbents cold trap. The continuous automatic monitoring method is, thus, considered very useful to real-time monitoring to understand the variations of VOCs concentrations in ambient air, as it adopts much simpler procedures in sampling, analysis, and data integration steps than manual monitoring methods. However, it should be noted that there is a high possibility of benzene artifacts formation through the Nafion dryer, which is often installed to remove water vapor in air samples before being adsorbed onto the cold trap. Therefore, if a Nafion dryer is used in any studies of monitoring VOCs, the benzene contamination should be carefully examined before carrying out obtaining the data.