• The KIPS Transactions:PartA
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• v.13A no.5 s.102
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• pp.465-472
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• 2006

Recently, many suggestions have been made in image segmentation methods for extracting human organs or disease affected area from huge amounts of medical image datasets. However, images from some areas, such as brain, which have multiple structures with ambiruous structural borders, have limitations in their structural segmentation. To address this problem, clustering technique which classifies voxels into finite number of clusters is often employed. This, however, has its drawback, the influence from noise, which is caused from voxel by voxel operations. Therefore, applying image enhancing method to minimize the influence from noise and to make clearer image borders would allow more robust structural segmentation. This research proposes an efficient structural segmentation method by filtering based clustering to extract detail structures such as white matter, gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid from brain MR. First, coherence enhancing diffusion filtering is adopted to make clearer borders between structures and to reduce the noises in them. To the enhanced images from this process, fuzzy c-means clustering method was applied, conducting structural segmentation by assigning corresponding cluster index to the structure containing each voxel. The suggested structural segmentation method, in comparison with existing ones with clustering using Gaussian or general anisotropic diffusion filtering, showed enhanced accuracy which was determined by how much it agreed with the manual segmentation results. Moreover, by suggesting fine segmentation method on the border area with reproducible results and minimized manual task, it provides efficient diagnostic support for morphological abnormalities in brain.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.2124-2148
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• 2017

Accurate facial expression recognition (FER) requires reliable signal filtering and the effective feature extraction. Considering these requirements, this paper presents a novel approach for FER which is robust to noise. The main contributions of this work are: First, to preserve texture details in facial expression images and remove image noise, we improved the anisotropic diffusion filter by adjusting the diffusion coefficient according to two factors, namely, the gray value difference between the object and the background and the gradient magnitude of object. The improved filter can effectively distinguish facial muscle deformation and facial noise in face images. Second, to further improve robustness, we propose a new feature descriptor based on a combination of the Histogram of Oriented Gradients with the Canny operator (Canny-HOG) which can represent the precise deformation of eyes, eyebrows and lips for FER. Third, Canny-HOG's block and cell sizes are adjusted to reduce feature dimensionality and make the classifier less prone to overfitting. Our method was tested on images from the JAFFE and CK databases. Experimental results in L-O-Sam-O and L-O-Sub-O modes demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method. Meanwhile, the recognition rate of this method is not significantly affected in the presence of Gaussian noise and salt-and-pepper noise conditions.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TE
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.45-50
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• 2005

A UV camera is being used in various application regions such as industry, medical science, military, and environment monitoring. A ROIC(ReadOut IC) is developed and can read the responses from UV photodiode sensors which are made with III-V nitride semiconductors of GaN series haying high resolution and high efficiency. To design FPA(Focal Plane Array) UV $8{\times}8$ ROIC, the photodiode type sensor devices are modeled as the capacitor type ones. The ROIC reads out signals from the detector at)d outputs sequentially pixel signals after amplifying and noise filtering of them. The ROIC is fabricated using the $0.5{\mu}m$ 2Poly 3Metal N-well CMOS process. And then, it and photodiode array are hybrid bonded by gold stud bumping process using ACP(Anisotropic Conductive Paste). After the packaging, UV images appearing on PC verified the operations of the ROIC.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.23-31
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• 2000

Iterative curve evolution techniques are powerful methods for image segmentation. Classical methods proposed curve evolutions which guarantee close contours at convergence and, combined with the level set method, they easily handled curve topology changes. In this paper, we present a new geometric active contour model based on level set methods introduced by Osher & Sethian for detection of object boundaries or shape and we adopt anisotropic diffusion filtering method for removing noise from original image. Classical methods allow only one-way curve evolutions : shrinking or expanding of the curve. Thus, the initial curve must encircle all the objects to be segmented or several curves must be used, each one totally inside one object. But our method allows a two-way curve evolution : parts of the curve evolve in the outward direction while others evolve in the inward direction. It offers much more freedom in the initial curve position than with a classical geodesic search method. Our algorithm performs accurate and precise segmentations from noisy images with complex objects(jncluding sharp angles, deep concavities or holes), Besides it easily handled curve topology changes. In order to minimize the processing time, we use the narrow band method which allows us to perform calculations in the neighborhood of the contour and not in the whole image.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.37 no.10
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• pp.751-759
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• 2010

This paper is to propose a method to enhance the connectivity of the broken structures. The pixels to be connected are found by a decision rule which is based on the intensity and gradient information of the neighboring pixels. The intensity of the pixel, if it is decided to be filled, is increased so that the pixel together with its neighbors looks connected. The anisotropic diffusion follows to make the connected structural region look more natural. The same structure matrices have been used both to get gradient information and to decide the direction of diffusion to improve the computational speed. It has been shown by the experiments on the real ultrasound images that the broken structural regions can be connected by the proposed method.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.73-76
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• 2011

본 논문에서는 세라믹 비파괴 검사를 이용하여 획득한 소재 영상에서 기존의 결함 검출 방법보다 결함 검출의 정확도를 개선하기 위한 개선된 결함 검출 방법을 제안한다. 제안된 결함 검출 방법은 명암 대비를 강조하기 위해 최소 명암도와 최대 명암도를 이용한 Ends-in Search Stretching 기법을 적용하여 비파괴 영상의 명암 대비를 강조한다. Stretching 기법이 적용된 영상에 $7{\times}7$ Sobel 마스크를 적용하여 비파괴 영상의 경계 영역을 추출하고, 영상의 잡음을 제거하기 위해 비등방성 필터링을 적용하여 영상을 보정한다. 보정된 영상에서 임계치 이진화 기법을 적용하여 경계 영역의 기울기를 계산하고, 계산된 기울기를 이용하여 비파괴 영상의 영역을 세분화한다. 세분화된 영역을 구분하기 위해 Grassfire Labeling 기법을 적용한다. Grassfire Labeling 기법이 적용된 영상을 Ends-in Search Stretching 기법이 적용된 비파괴 영상에 적용한 후에 대각선 이진화 기법을 적용한다. 이진화된 영상에서 형태학적 정보를 이용하여 잡음을 제거하고 결함을 검출한다. 본 논문에서 제안한 방법을 획득한 세라믹 소재 영상을 대상으로 실험한 결과, 기존의 결함 검출 방법보다 더 효과적으로 소재의 결함을 추출할 수 있는 것을 확인할 수 있었다.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.110-116
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• 2006

Finite element method (FEM) provides several advantages over other numerical methods such as boundary element method, since it allows truly volumetric analysis and incorporation of realistic electrical conductivity values. Finite element mesh generation is the first requirement in such in FEM to represent the volumetric domain of interest with numerous finite elements accurately. However, conventional mesh generators and approaches offered by commercial packages do not generate meshes that are content-adaptive to the contents of given images. In this paper, we present software that has been implemented to generate content-adaptive finite element meshes (cMESHes) based on the contents of MR images. The software offers various computational tools for cMESH generation from multi-slice MR images. The software named as the Content-adaptive FE Mesh Generation Toolbox runs under the commercially available technical computation software called Matlab. The major routines in the toolbox include anisotropic filtering of MR images, feature map generation, content-adaptive node generation, Delaunay tessellation, and MRI segmentation for the head conductivity modeling. The presented tools should be useful to researchers who wish to generate efficient mesh models from a set of MR images. The toolbox is available upon request made to the Functional and Metabolic Imaging Center or Bio-imaging Laboratory at Kyung Hee University in Korea.

• Journal of International Society for Simulation Surgery
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.37-40
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• 2014

Purpose For living donor liver transplantation, liver segmentation is difficult due to the variability of its shape across patients and similarity of the density of neighbor organs such as heart, stomach, kidney, and spleen. In this paper, we propose an automatic segmentation of the liver using multi-planar anatomy and deformable surface model in portal phase of abdominal contrast-enhanced CT images. Method Our method is composed of four main steps. First, the optimal liver volume is extracted by positional information of pelvis and rib and by separating lungs and heart from CT images. Second, anisotropic diffusing filtering and adaptive thresholding are used to segment the initial liver volume. Third, morphological opening and connected component labeling are applied to multiple planes for removing neighbor organs. Finally, deformable surface model and probability summation map are performed to refine a posterior liver surface and missing left robe in previous step. Results All experimental datasets were acquired on ten living donors using a SIEMENS CT system. Each image had a matrix size of $512{\times}512$ pixels with in-plane resolutions ranging from 0.54 to 0.70 mm. The slice spacing was 2.0 mm and the number of images per scan ranged from 136 to 229. For accuracy evaluation, the average symmetric surface distance (ASD) and the volume overlap error (VE) between automatic segmentation and manual segmentation by two radiologists are calculated. The ASD was $0.26{\pm}0.12mm$ for manual1 versus automatic and $0.24{\pm}0.09mm$ for manual2 versus automatic while that of inter-radiologists was $0.23{\pm}0.05mm$. The VE was $0.86{\pm}0.45%$ for manual1 versus automatic and $0.73{\pm}0.33%$ for manaual2 versus automatic while that of inter-radiologist was $0.76{\pm}0.21%$. Conclusion Our method can be used for the liver volumetry for the pre-surgery planning of living donor liver transplantation.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.81-89
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• 2003

The dose distributions of designed Ir-192 micro-source were investigated by dose computations which were accomplished by employing shape of encapsule material and thickness of the source for self-absorption. The computation dose derived from air-kerma rate (S$_{k}$ ) and dose rate constant (Λ) includes the anisotropy of dose distribution around the source. We got the dose rate constants in a water medium is 1.154 cGy h$^{-1}$ U$^{-1}$ . The size of the source was 0.5 mm in diameter and 3.5 mm in length and it was encapsuled in 1.1 mm$\Phi$${\times}$5.5 mm of stainless steel sealed with 0.3 mm of filter thickness. The tissue dose of reference point at 1.0 cm radial distance of the source axis was delivered 1.154 Uh$^{-1}$ (1.3167${\times}$10$^{-3}$ cGy/mCi-sec) from the S$_{k}$ 4.108U/mCi of Ir-192 source. The filtration effect contributed to air-kerma strength as exponential filtering effect of 86.2% in total attenuation, but self-absorption was 88.4% from radial dose distributions. In particular, the dose attenuations showed a rapid anisotropic distributions as 56% of reference dose along to $\pm$10 degrees from the tip of source axis and 50% for of that to source-cable direction. We persist in use the large diameter of applicator will avoid the dose anisotropy by the filtered attenuation effects along the axis of Ir-192 micro-source.