• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2007.07a
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• pp.357-358
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• 2007

Contrast enhancement in the field of ultrasound imaging contributes to improve the accuracy of medical diagnosis by enhancing the visibility of ultrasound images. This paper proposes a contrast enhancement method that improves the contrast of ultrasound images both globally and locally by fusing global and adaptive contrast enhancement methods. Experimental results show that our approach yields more competitive results than the existing global and adaptive contrast enhancement methods in enhancing the visibility of ultrasound images.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.325-338
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• 2009

National parks provide recreation, health, and science to human being. The provision of beautiful landscape view of the national park improves an economic and social phase of a nation. However, visibility impairment frequently occurred in the national park area of Gyeongju. The purpose of this study is to investigate the physical and the chemical characteristics of visibility reduction observed at the national park area of Gyeongju. Optical, chemical, meteorological characteristics and scenic monitoring were performed at the visibility monitoring station of Gyeongju University located at the Seoak section of Gyeongju national park from April 28 to May 9, 2008. Light extinction, light scattering, and light absorption coefficients were continuously measured using a transmissometer, a nephelometer, and an aethalometer, respectively. In order to investigate the impact of aerosol chemistry on visibility impairment, size-resolved aerosols were collected at intervals of 2-hour (from 8 A.M. to 6 P.M.) and 14-hour (from 6 P.M. to 8 A.M.) interval each sampling day. The average light extinction coefficient and the average visual range were measured to be $270{\pm}135\;Mm^{-1}$ and $14.5{\pm}6.3\;km$ during the intensive monitoring period, respectively. It was revealed that sulfate particle was the largest contributor to the light extinction under hazy condition. Organic mass accounted for about 26% of the average light extinction. The mass extinction efficiencies for $PM_{1.0}$, $PM_{2.5}$, and $PM_{10}$ were estimated to be 9.0, 4.7, and $2.7\;m^2\;g^{-1}$ under the consideration of water growth function of hygroscopic aerosols, respectively.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.127-134
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• 2016

PURPOSES : Visibility of lanes on the road improves as retro-reflectivity rises. This helps reduce traffic accidents at nighttime or in bad weather. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of improved visibility on reduction of traffic accidents when the color of the lane in the median of the highway was changed from yellow to white. METHODS : In order to evaluate the accident reduction effect of the white left shoulder line, Hauer (1997)'s Comparison-Group method was chosen as an analysis methodology. The JungBu-2 highway, which is equipped with the white left shoulder line and is in trial operation, was chosen as a target for analysis. Data of accidents for 10 months before and after installation was collected and analyzed. In addition to the number of accidents, the types of accidents were classified into nighttime accidents, accidents in bad weather, and median collisions. The accident reduction effect of improved visibility of lanes was analyzed. RESULTS : The analysis' finding showed that installation of the white left shoulder line decreased the number of accidents by 28%. Moreover, improvement in visibility was effective in reducing nighttime accidents by 67.63%, accidents in bad weather by 55.19%, and median collisions by 48.55%. CONCLUSIONS : Based on the analysis' results in this study, it was concluded that white left shoulder line on the freeway contributed to reduce traffic accidents, especially nighttime accidents, accidents in bad weather, and median collisions.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.684-694
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• 2012

In the underwater environment, light is absorbed and scattered by water and floating particles, which makes the underwater images suffer from color degradation and limited visibility. Physically, the amount of the scattered light transmitted to the image is proportional to the distance between the camera and the object. In this paper, the proposed visibility enhancement. method utilizes depth images to estimate the light transmission and the degradation factor by the scattered light. To recover the scatter-free images without unnatural artifacts, the proposed method normalizes the degradation factor based on the value of each pixel of the image. Finally, the scatter-free images are obtained by removing the scattered components on the image according to the estimated transmission. The proposed method also considers the color discrepancies of underwater stereo images so that the stereo images have the same color appearance after the visibility enhancement. The experimental results show that the proposed method improves the color contrast more than 5% to 14% depending on the experimental images.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.25-35
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• 2017

This study aimed to analyze a driver's night visibility, according to the installation of a lighting system for driving an agricultural machine during the night time. For the night visibility analysis, a luminance measurement test on the lighting system and a gaze duration measurement test through eye movement measurement devices were carried out. In the luminance measurement test, the increase of luminance was confirmed as relative distance from an agricultural machine was closer and the conditions of the lighting equivalence are improved. Also the gaze duration measurement test, total gaze duration from an agricultural machine increased, as the conditions of the lighting equivalence are improved. In addition, it was identified that the difference in average gaze duration from an agricultural machine was statistically significant as the agricultural machine was driven in high speed. In conclusion, when the lighting system is installed on an agricultural machine, a driver's night visibility from the agricultural machine improves, which is expected to be enormously helpful to the prevention of agricultural machine accidents.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.171-183
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• 2018

Turner and Penn (1) from UCL have proved that Visibility Graph Analysis (VGA) can be used as a more accurate method to predict the pedestrian distribution in building spaces. However, this methodology neglects certain elements that are of special influence on pedestrian distribution in buildings, especially the entrances and exits. Based on Space Syntax, this dissertation improves on the traditional method of Visibility Graph Analysis, using three shopping centers in Shenzhen as examples, attempts to explore a new parameter - "attenuation index of pedestrians at the entrances and exits" - using relevant data of the entrances and exits of the three cases, and combines it with traditional VGA analysis through weighted calculation, in order to provide more accurate predictions of pedestrian patterns in shopping centers.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.26-35
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• 2013

According to traffic accidents-related statistics, 57.6 percent of the fatality of vehicle-to-pedestrian accident, occurred on crosswalk in rural highways. Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs in South Korea is conceiving to reduce in the number of the fatality. This study is to reestablish the criteria of implementing lighting through field experiments and to develop an effective alternative of crosswalk lighting.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.185-189
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• 2021

Herein, we propose a functional polymer cantilever to enhance maturation and contractile force of cardiomyocytes. The proposed cantilever consists of a surface-patterned polymer substrate and silver nanowires (AgNWs). The AgNWs are transferred to the PDMS substrate using conventional molding techniques. This thin metallic surface significantly improves the adhesion of cardiomyocyte on the surface-patterned PDMS with the hydrophobic characteristics. In addition, the use of AgNWs improves the visibility of the conducting PDMS substrate for the observation of cardiomyocyte through an inverted microscope. The AgNWs also assist in synchronizing each cardiomyocyte to maximize its contractile force.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
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• v.31B no.8
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• pp.160-171
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• 1994

The wide dynamic range and severely attenuated contrast in mediastinal area appearing in typical chest radiographs have often caused difficulties in effective visualization and diagnosis of lung diseases. This paper proposes a new adaptive image enhancement technique which potentially solves this problem and there by improves observer performance through image processing. In the proposed method image processing is applied to the chest radiograph with different processing parameters for the lung field and mediastinum adaptively since there are much differences in anatomical and imaging properties between these two regions. To achieve this the chest radiograph is divided into the lung and mediastinum by gray level thresholding using the cumulative histogram and the dynamic range compression and local contrast enhancement are carried out selectively in the mediastinal region. Thereafter a gray scale transformation is performed considering the JND(just noticeable difference) characteristic for effective image displa. The processed images showed apparenty improved contrast in mediastinum and maintained moderate brightness in the lung field. No artifact could be observed. In the visibility evaluation experiment with 5 radiologists the processed images with better visibility was observed for the 5 important anatomical structures in the thorax.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.101-108
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• 2015

In this paper, a robust traffic light detection method is proposed by using vision sensor and DGPS(Difference Global Positioning System). The conventional vision-based detection methods are very sensitive to illumination change, for instance, low visibility at night time or highly reflection by bright light. To solve these limitations in visual sensor, DGPS is incorporated to determine the location and shape of traffic lights which are available from traffic light database. Furthermore the geometric relationship between traffic light and vision sensor is used to locate the traffic light in the image by using DGPS information. The empirical results show that the proposed method improves by 51% in detection rate for night time with marginal improvement in daytime environment.