• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.959-966
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• 2010

Quantitative ultrasound analysis provides fundamental information of various ultrasound parameters using spectral information of the short-gated radiofrequency(RF) data. Therefore, accurate extraction of spectral information from backscattered RF signal is crucial for further analysis of medical ultrasound parameters. In this paper, we propose two techniques for calculating a more accurate power spectrum which are based on the phase-compensation using the normalized cross-correlation to minimize estimation errors due to phase variations, and the weighted averaging technique to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio(SNR). The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method estimates better results with 10% smaller estimation variances compared to the conventional methods.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.1025-1031
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• 2007

GPS is widely used for positioning applications and attitude of a vehicle can be found also with multiple antennas. However, extremely weak signal level prevents GPS from indoor operation. DR with accelerometers and gyros and landmark based localization method used for indoor applications increase complexity and cost. In this paper, a simple but very efficient ultrasound based attitude determination system which determines both position and attitude in WSN is given. The range between transmitter and receivers are measured using the arrival time difference between ultrasound and RF signal. The 3 dimensional positions can be found using more than 3 range measurements. Furthermore, if more than 2 transmitters are used, the attitude can be determined using the baseline vectors obtained by differencing transmitter and receiver positions. The prototype system is implemented to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. In addition, an error analysis shows the relation between the attitude error and basel me length, quality of measurement and orientation of a vehicle. The static and dynamic experiments performed by micro mobile robot shows accurate position with less than 1.5cm error and attitude with less than 1 degree error can be obtained continuously with 20cm baseline. It is expected that these results can be adapted without modification to indoor applications such as home cleaning robot and autonomous wheelchair maneuvering.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.179-185
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• 2001

혈관에 발생하는 동맥 경화증은 그 발생 시기와 진행 정도를 예측하기 힘들어 초기 단계의 진단 및 치료가 어렵다. 이러한 이유로 혈관 질병의 진단은 많은 연구자들의 관심 대상이 되어왔고, 현재까지도 그 진단 장치 및 방법에 관한 연구가 활발히 진행되고 있다. 혈관 벽의 두께 측정은 혈관 질병을 진단할 수 있는 대표적인 지표이다. 그러므로 본 연구는 혈관 벽에서 수신되는 초음파 RF(Radio Frequency) 신호를 wavelet 변환하여 두께를 측정할 수 있는 방법을 제안한다. 시뮬레이션 결과를 토대로 두께가 각각 0.53mm, 1.2mm인 고분자 물질을 가지고 두께측정 실험을 행하였다. 기존의 방법인 주파수 스펙트럼법과 제안한 방법인 wavelet 변환법에 의하여 측정된 평균 두께는 0.53mm인 경우 각각 0.670$\pm$0.168mm(79.10%), 0.448$\pm$0.084mm(84.53%)이고, 1.2mm인 경우 각각 0.962$\pm$0.072mm(80.17%), 1.149$\pm$0.066mm(95.15%)이다. In-vitro 실험을 행하기 위하여 한천, gelatin, SiC 결정을 가지고 두께가 0.85mm인 혈관 유사 시편을 제작하였고, 이 시편으로부터 데이터를 획득하여 이를 제안한 방법으로 두께를 측정하였다. 그 결과 제안한 방법으로 측정된 평균 두께는 0.8008$\pm$0.0154mm(94.22%)이다. 결론적으로 wavelet 변환을 통해서 혈관 벽의 두께를 정밀하게 측정할 수 있는 가능성이 있음을 알 수 있다.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.430-437
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• 2018

Ultrasonic attenuation is an important parameter in Quantitative Ultrasound and many algorithms have been proposed to improve estimation accuracy and repeatability for multiple independent estimates. In this work, we propose an improved algorithm for estimating ultrasonic attenuation utilizing the optimal frequency compounding technique based on stochastic noise model. We formulate mathematical compounding equations in the AWGN channel model and solve optimization problems to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio for multiple frequency components. Individual estimates are calculated by the reference phantom method which provides very stable results in uniformly attenuating regions. We also propose the guideline to select frequency ranges of reflected RF signals. Simulation results using numerical phantoms show that the proposed optimal frequency compounding method provides improved accuracy while minimizing estimation bias. The estimation variance is reduced by only 16% for the un-compounding case, whereas it is reduced by 68% for the uniformly compounding case. The frequency range corresponding to the half-power for reflected signals also provides robust and efficient estimation performance.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.34 no.6C
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• pp.611-618
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• 2009

Recently, an indoor location-aware technology has been focused on as a key technology for context awareness in ubiquitous computing environments. The conventional Cricket system was designed with a non-centralized architecture, which has advantages in terms of user privacy, deployment, scalability, decentralized administration, network heterogeneity, and low cost. In this paper, an indoor location system based on TDOA between RF and ultrasound signals is designed, which improves the Cricket system. A 2.4GHz frequency is employed for transmitting RF messages, which is in an ISM band. The beaconing frequency is doubled to enhance the channel utilization rate. The ultrasonic pulse duration is optimized to increase the coverage of ultrasonic signals. The function of calculating location coordinates is embedded in a listener. The location-update rate and location accuracy are also improved.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.403-411
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• 2023

Functional ultrasound imaging, such as elasticity imaging and micro-blood flow Doppler imaging, enhances diagnostic capability by providing useful mechanical and functional information about tissues. However, the implementation of functional ultrasound imaging poses limitations such as the storage of vast amounts of data in Radio Frequency (RF) data acquisition and processing. In this paper, we propose a sub-Nyquist approach that reduces the amount of acquired axial samples for efficient shear-wave elasticity imaging. The proposed method acquires data at a sampling rate one-third lower than the conventional Nyquist sampling rate and tracks shear-wave signals through RF signals reconstructed using band-pass filtering-based interpolation. In this approach, the RF signal is assumed to have a fractional bandwidth of 67 %. To validate the approach, we reconstruct the shear-wave velocity images using shear-wave tracking data obtained by conventional and proposed approaches, and compare the group velocity, contrast-to-noise ratio, and structural similarity index measurement. We qualitatively and quantitatively demonstrate the potential of sub-Nyquist sampling-based shear-wave elasticity imaging, indicating that our approach could be practically useful in three-dimensional shear-wave elasticity imaging, where a massive amount of ultrasound data is required.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2001.06d
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• pp.151-154
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• 2001

In this Paper, a new harmonic imaging technique is proposed and evaluated experimentally. In the proposed method, a weighted chin signal with a hanning window is transmitted. The RF samples obtained on each array element are individually compressed by correlating with the reference signal defined as the 2nd harmonic (2f0) component of a transmitted chirp signal generated in a square-law system. The proposed method uses the compressed 2f0 component to form an image, for which the crosscorrelation term with f0 component should be suppressed below at least -60dB. After experiment, the 6dB pulse width and peak sidelobe level of the compressed 2f0 component were 0.7us and -60dB, respectively. This result shows that the proposed method can successfully eliminate the f0 component with a single transmit-receive event and therefore is more efficient than the conventional pulse inversion (PI) method in terms of frame rate. We also observed that the 2nd harmonic compont starts to decrease for source pressure higher than 210kPa in water, which implies that SNR of the 2nd harmonic imaging using short pulses cnanot be incresed beyond a certain limit.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.11
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• pp.1887-1893
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• 2016

The VSA(Video Signal Analysis) method is the time-domain approach for estimating ultrasonic attenuation which utilizes the envelop signals from backscattered rf signals. The echogenicity of backscattered ultrasonic signals, however, from deeper depths are distorted when the broadband transmit pulse is used and it degrades the estimation accuracy of attenuation coefficients. We propose the modified VSA method using adaptive bandpass filters according to the centroid shift of echo signals as a pulse propagates. The technique of dual-reference diffraction compensation is also proposed to minimize the estimation errors because the difference of attenuation properties between the reference and sample aggravates the estimation accuracy when the differences are accumulated in deeper depth. The proposed techniques minimize the distortion of relative echogenicity and maximize the signal-to-noise ratio at the given depth. Simulation results for numerical tissue-mimicking phantoms show that the Rectangular-shaped filter with the appropriate center frequency exhibits the best estimation performance and the technique of the dual-reference diffraction compensation dramatically improves accuracy for the region after the beam focus.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.61-72
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• 2002

In this parer, a new harmonic imaging technique is Proposed and evaluated experimentally. In the Proposed method. a weighted chirp signal with a hanning window is transmitted. The RF samples obtained on each array element are individually compressed by correlating with the reference signal defined as the 2nd harmonic component($2f_0$) of a transmitted chirp signal generated in a square-law system. The correlator output will then consist of the compressed version of the $2f_0$ component generated in tissue and the crosscorrelation sequence of the fundamental($f_0$) and 2f$_{0}$components. The Proposed method uses the compressed $2f_0$ component to form an image. for which the crosscorrelation term should be suppressed below at least -50dB. The Proposed method has two process, 2f$_{0}$-correlation and $2f_0$-correlation(PI) . $2f_0$-correlation can successfully eliminate the $f_0$ component with a single transmit-receive events and therefore is more efficient than the conventional Pulse inversion method in terms of the frame rate. 2i)-correlation(Pl) Performs pulse compression after applying pulse inversion method for the 2nd harmonic image with high resolution and SNR. Another advantage of the proposed method is that the SNR of 2nd harmonic imaging can be improved without limitation by increasing the duration of the chirp signal. The proposed method was verified through both the computer simulations and actual experiments .ts .

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.711-717
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• 2007

Location information will become increasingly important for future Pervasive Computing applications. Location tracking system of a moving device can be classified into two types of architectures: an active mobile architecture and a passive mobile architecture. In the former, a mobile device actively transmits signals for estimating distances to listeners. In the latter, a mobile device listens signals from beacons passively. Although the passive architecture such as Cricket location system is inexpensive, easy to set up, and safe, it is less precise than the active one. In this paper, we present a passive location system using Cricket Mote sensors which use RF and ultrasonic signals to estimate distances. In order to improve accuracy of the passive system, the transmission speed of ultrasound was compensated according to air temperature at the moment. Upper and lower bounds of a distance estimation were set up through measuring minimum and maximum distances that ultrasonic signal can reach to. Distance estimations beyond the upper and the lower bounds were filtered off as errors in our scheme. With collecting distance estimation data at various locations and comparing each distance estimation with real distance respectively, we proposed an equation to compensate the deviation at each point. Equations for proposed algorithm were derived to calculate relative coordinates of a moving device. At indoor and outdoor tests, average location error and average location tracking period were 3.5 cm and 0.5 second, respectively, which outperformed Cricket location system of MIT.