• 한국가시화정보학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.04a
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• pp.51-78
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• 2002

A number of research groups worldwide are studying electronic implants that can be mounted on retinal optic nerve/visual cortex to restore vision of patients suffering from retinal degeneration. The implants consist of a neural interface made of biocompatible materials, one or more integrated circuits for stimuli generation, a camera, an image processor, and a telemetric channel. The realization of these classes of neural prosthetic devices is largely due to the explosive development of micro- and nano-electronics technologies in the late $20^{th}$ century and biotechnologies more recently. Animal experiments showed promise and some human experiments are in progress to indicate that recognition of images can be obtained and improved over time. We, at NBS-ERC of SNU, have started our own retinal implant project in 2000. We have selected polyimide as the biomaterial for an epi-retinal stimulator. In-vitro and in-vivo biocompatibility studies have been performed on the electrode arrays. We have obtained good affinity to retinal pigment epithelial cells and no harmful effect. The implant also showed very good stability and safety in rabbit eye for 12 weeks. We have also demonstrated that through proper stimulation of inner retina, meaning vision can be obtained.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.44 no.4 s.316
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• pp.26-34
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• 2007

Intelligent projection system indicates a system that displays desired images on an arbitrary screen in an arbitrary environment using projector without noticeable image distortion. In recent years, projectors have become widespread and ubiquitous due to their increasing capabilities and declining cost. Moreover, the size of projectors is getting smaller and handhold projectors are emerging. Thanks to these advances, the demand for intelligent projection system has been significantly increased and the demand has led to remarkable progress of the related techniques or technologies to intelligent projection system However, there are still some environments (or conditions, mainly dynamic ones) that intelligent projections systems cannot handle and they have limited the application area of intelligent projection systems. This paper exemplifies such environments (e.g. specular screen, dynamic screen) and propose effective solutions (i.e. multiple overlapping projectors, complementary pattern embedding) for thor And the usefulness of the solutions is verified through experimental results and user evaluation. Notice that the environments are considered not simultaneously but independently because it is impossible to consider them simultaneously by simply combining the solutions for each. Acually, a totally different solution would be necessary to consider them simultaneously. Therefore, we expect that the proposed methods would largely extend the application area of intelligent projection systems except for severely arbitrary environment.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.8-14
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• 2020

In general, auto parts production assembly line is assembled and produced by automatic mounting by an automated robot. In such a production site, quality problems such as misalignment of parts (doors, trunks, roofs, etc.) to be assembled with the vehicle body or collision between assembly robots and components are often caused. In order to solve such a problem, the quality of parts is manually inspected by using mechanical jig devices outside the automated production line. Automotive inspection technology is the most commonly used field of vision, which includes surface inspection such as mounting hole spacing and defect detection, body panel dents and bends. It is used for guiding, providing location information to the robot controller to adjust the robot's path to improve process productivity and manufacturing flexibility. The most difficult weighing and measuring technology is to calibrate the surface analysis and position and characteristics between parts by storing images of the part to be measured that enters the camera's field of view mounted on the side or top of the part. The problem of the machine vision device applied to the automobile production line is that the lighting conditions inside the factory are severely changed due to various weather changes such as morning-evening, rainy days and sunny days through the exterior window of the assembly production plant. In addition, since the material of the vehicle body parts is a steel sheet, the reflection of light is very severe, which causes a problem in that the quality of the captured image is greatly changed even with a small light change. In this study, the distance between the car body and the door part and the door are acquired by the measuring device combining the laser slit light source and the LED pattern light source. The result is transferred to the joint robot for assembling parts at the optimum position between parts, and the assembly is done at the optimal position by changing the angle and step.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.509-516
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• 2013

As the visual fatigue induced by 3D visual stimulation has raised some safety concerns in the industry, this study aims to quantify the visual fatigue through the means of measuring the facial temperature changes. Facial temperature was measured for one minute before and after watching a visual stimulus. Whether the visual fatigue has occurred was measured through subjective evaluations and high cognitive tasks. The difference in the changes that occurred after watching a 2D stimulus and a 3D stimulus was computed in order to associate the facial temperature changes and the visual fatigue induced by watching 3D contents. The results showed significant differences in the subjective evaluations and in the high cognitive tasks. Also, the ERP latency increased after watching 3D stimuli. There were significant differences in the maximum value of the temperature at the forehead and at the tip of the nose. A previous study showed that 3D visual fatigue activates the sympathetic nervous system. Activation of the sympathetic nervous system is known to increase the heart rate as well as the blood flow into the face through the carotid arteries system. When watching 2D or 3D stimuli, the sympathetic nervous system activation dictates the blood flow, which then influences the facial temperature. This study is meaningful in that it is one of the first investigations that looks into the possibility to measure 3D visual fatigue with thermal images.

• Journal of Korean Biological Nursing Science
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.25-41
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• 1999

Physiological activity of osteoblast including bone formation is known to be closely related to the increase of intracellular $Ca^{2+}$ activity($[Ca^{2+}]_i$) in osteoblast. $Ca^{2+}$ is an important intracellular messenger in diverse cellular functions, and regulation of its level is mediated by the transmembrane $Ca^{2+}$ movement via $Ca^{2+}$ channels, $Na^+-Ca^{2+}$ exchange, and by intracellular $Ca^{2+}$ movement through the intracellular stores. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the intracellular $Ca^{2+}$ is regulated in osteoblast-like cells(OLCs) by measuring $Ca^{2+}$ activity with cell imaging technique. OLCs were isolated from femur and tibia of neonatal rats, and cultured for 7 days. Cultured OLCs were loaded with a $Ca^{2+}$-sensitive fluorescent dye, Fura-2, and fluorescence images were monitored with a cooled CCD camera. The images were processed and analyzed with an image analyzing software. The results were as follows. (1) $[Ca^{2+}]_i$ of OLC decreased as the $Ca^{2+}$ concentration in the superfusing Tyrode solution was lowered. When $Na^+$ concentration in the superfusing solution was decreased, $[Ca^{2+}]_i$ increased.. These suggest that $Ca^{2+}$ flux occurs via the $Na^+-Ca^{2+}$ exchange mechanism. (2) When $Na^+$ in the superfusing solution was removed. a transient $Ca^{2+}$, increase($Ca^{2+}$ spike) was occasionally observed. However, $Ca^{2+}$ spike was not observed after adding 1 ${\mu}M$ thapsigargin. This implies that the generation of $Ca^{2+}$ spike is mediated by the release of $Ca^{2+}$ from endoplasmic reticulum(ER). (3) As the $Ca^{2+}$ concentration in the superfusing solution was raised, the frequency of 0mM $Na^+$-induced $Ca^{2+}$ spike increased, suggesting that $Ca^{2+}$-induced $Ca^{2+}$ release(CICR) mechanism exists. (4) After $[Ca^{2+}]_i$ was decreased with the superfusion of $Ca^{2+}$-free solution containing thapsigargin, the recovery of $[Ca^{2+}]_i$ with reperfusion of 2.5mM $Ca^{2+}$ solution transiently exceeded the control level, suggesting that the depletion of $Ca^{2+}$ in ER induces $Ca^{2+}$ influx from extracellular medium via store-operated $Ca^{2+}$ influx(SOCI) mechanism. (5) $[Ca^{2+}]_i$ was not affected by the superfusion of 25mM $K^+$ Tyrode solution. These results suggest that intracellular $Ca^{2+}$ activity in osteoblast is regulated by transmembrane $Ca^{2+}$ flux via $Na^+-Ca^{2+}$ exchange, $Ca^{2+}$ release from the internal store (ER) via $Ca^{2+}$-induced $Ca^{2+}$ release, and store-operated $Ca^{2+}$ influx across the cell membrane.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
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• v.33B no.1
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• pp.116-127
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• 1996

In this paper, a scheme of classification of scaled textured images using normalized pattern spectrum incorporating arbitrary scale changes based on mathematical morphology is proposed in more general environments considering camera's zoom-in and zoom-out function. The normalized pattern spectrum means that firstly pattern spectrum is calculated and secondly interpolation is performed to incorporate scale changes according to scale change ratio in the same textured image class. Pattern spectrum is efficiently obtained by using both opening and closing, that is, we calculate pattern spectrum by opening method for pixels which have value more than threshold and calculate pattern spectrum by closing method for pixels which have value less than threshold. Also we compare classification accuracy between gray scale method and binary method. The proposed approach has the advantage of efficient information extraction, high accuracy, less computation, and parallel implementation. An important advantage of the proposed method is that it is possible to obtain high classification accuracy with only (1:1) scale images for training phase.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.9
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• pp.127-135
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• 2013

In order to acquire images in low-light environments, it is usually necessary to adopt long exposure times or resort to flash lights. However, flashes often induce color distortion, cause the red-eye effect and can be disturbing to subjects. On the other hand, long-exposure shots are susceptible to subject-motion, as well as motion-blur due to camera shake when performed hand-held. A recently introduced technique to overcome the limitations of traditional low-light photography is that of multi-spectral flash. Multi-spectral flash images are a combination of UV/IR and visible spectrum information. The general idea is that of retrieving details from the UV/IR spectrum and color from the visible spectrum. However, multi-spectral flash images themselves are subject to color distortion and noise. This works presents a method to compute multi-spectral flash images so that noise can be reduced and color accuracy improved. The proposed approach is a previously seen optimization method, improved by the introduction of a weight map used to discriminate uniform regions from detail regions. The weight map is generated by applying canny edge operator and it is applied to the optimization process for discriminating the weights in uniform region and edge. Accordingly, the weight of color information is increased in the uniform region and the detail region of weight is decreased in detail region. Therefore, the proposed method can be enhancing color reproduction and removing artifacts. The performance of the proposed method has been objectively evaluated using long-exposure shots as reference.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.7
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• pp.689-699
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• 2016

As the demand for LCD increases, the importance of inspection equipment for improving the efficiency of LCD production is continuously emphasized. The pattern inspection apparatus is one that detects minute defects of pattern quickly using optical equipment such as line scan camera. This pattern inspection apparatus makes a decision on whether a pixel is a defect or not using a single threshold value in order to meet constraint of real time inspection. However, a method that uses an adaptive thresholding scheme with different threshold values according to characteristics of each region in a pattern can greatly improve the performance of defect detection. To apply this adaptive thresholding scheme it has to be known that a certain pixel to be inspected belongs to which region. Therefore, this paper proposes a region matching algorithm that recognizes the region of each pixel to be inspected. The proposed algorithm is based on the pattern matching scheme with the consideration of real time constraint of machine vision and implemented through GPGPU in order to be applied to a practical system. Simulation results show that the proposed method not only satisfies the requirement for processing time of practical system but also improves the performance of defect detection.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.37 no.7A
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• pp.586-599
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• 2012

This paper proposes a fast face detection and tracking method which uses depth images as well as RGB images. It consists of the face detection procedure and the face tracking procedure. The face detection method basically uses an existing method, Adaboost, but it reduces the size of the search area by using the depth image. The proposed face tracking method uses a template matching technique and incorporates an early-termination scheme to reduce the execution time further. The results from implementing and experimenting the proposed methods showed that the proposed face detection method takes only about 39% of the execution time of the existing method. The proposed tracking method takes only 2.48ms per frame with $640{\times}480$ resolution. For the exactness, the proposed detection method showed a little lower in detection ratio but in the error ratio, which is for the cases when a detected one as a face is not really a face, the proposed method showed only about 38% of that of the previous method. The proposed face tracking method turned out to have a trade-off relationship between the execution time and the exactness. In all the cases except a special one, the tracking error ratio is as low as about 1%. Therefore, we expect the proposed face detection and tracking methods can be used individually or in combined for many applications that need fast execution and exact detection or tracking.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.546-554
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• 2019

Typically, closed-circuit television (CCTV) monitoring is mainly used for post-processes (i.e. to provide evidence after an incident has occurred), but by using a streaming video feed, machine-based learning, and advanced image recognition techniques, current technology can be extended to respond to crimes or reports of missing persons in real time. The multi-CCTV cooperation technique developed in this study is a program model that delivers similarity information about a suspect (or moving object) extracted via CCTV at one location and sent to a monitoring agent to track the selected suspect or object when he, she, or it moves out of range to another CCTV camera. To improve the operating efficiency of local government CCTV control centers, we describe here the partial automation of a CCTV control system that currently relies upon monitoring by human agents. We envisage an integrated crime prevention service, which incorporates the cooperative CCTV network suggested in this study and that can easily be experienced by citizens in ways such as determining a precise individual location in real time and providing a crime prevention service linked to smartphones and/or crime prevention/safety information.