• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.431-438
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• 2004

Medical ultrasonic imaging is a useful imaging facility known to be most safe and easy. It enables physicians to observe the inside structures of the bodies, blood flow, and motions of internal organs. Some physical properties of biologic tissues can also be estimated from backscattered sounds. However, the ultrasonic pulses interrogating the living organisms leave their footprints in the returning signals during imaging. Some significant details are buried in the footprints and their overlaps from adjacent particles. These distortions also decrease the quality of the images. Many research efforts have been made to enhance the image quality and to recover the acoustic information in various ways. In this study, a new interrogation method based on the wavelet and subband filter bank is proposed. It adopts the subband wavelet filters satisfying the perfect-reconstruction (PR) conditions as the interrogating pulses to restore the details useful in tissue characterization and to enhance the image quality. The proposed method was applied to two types of simulations of ultrasonic imaging. The results showed its ability to restore the detailsin the simulated interrogation of biologic tissues, and verified the improved image quality in the simulated imaging of general ultrasonic phantom compared with the conventional method.

• Korean Journal of Digital Imaging in Medicine
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.23-31
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• 2012

There are AEC mode and fix mode to exposure when the whole spine antero-posterior radiography is done by using DR equipment. This study compared the utility of fix mode to AEC mode, by evaluating organ dose and effective dose and by examining the quality of radiographic image. GE DEFINIUM 8000 and ART-200X Rando Phantom manufactured by Flukebiometical were used for this study. The Rando phantom was set in front of wall detector of X-rays equipment. AEC mode was set at 80kVp and Fix mode was set at 80kVp, 25mAs, 32mAs, 40mAs, and 50mAs. Whole spine AP image were aquired by combining C, T-L and L-S spine images obtained through 3 exposures. When obtaining C, T-L and L-S spine images, were checked for Air kerma (mGy) value calculated by UNFORS Xi meter attached at the phantom surface of center of radiation field. The effective and organ doses were compared by PCXMC program (PC-Based Monte Carlo Program). The quality of obtained radiographic image was evaluated visually by 3 radiologists using resolution chart. When the effective doses was calculated based on tissue weighting factor of ICRP-103, 1.278mSv was measured by AEC mode, and Fix mode measured 0.405mSv at 25mAs, 0.518mSv at 32mAs, 0.649mSv at 40mAs, and 0.810mSv at 50mAS. In addition, the organ dose measured with esposure at 25mAs by Fix mode was almost equivalent to the organ dose by AEC mode, at the esophagus, thyroid, oral mucosa, salivaly glands located at the cervical spine part, while the organ dose by Fix mode was in general lower than the organ dose by AEC mode at the other organs. When Fix mode at 32mAs, 40mAs, and 50mAs was compared to AEC mode for organ dose in 26 organs, AEC mode had higher measurement in 21 organs but not for than brain, trachea, thyroid, oral mucosa, and salivaly glands which are located at the cervical spine part. The image quality evaluated by resolution test chart was much higher with AEC mode than the quality with Fix mode at all exposure conditions. However, while the image quality of cervical spine exposured at 50mAs by Fix mode was lower than the quality of AEC mode, thoraco-lumbar spine and lumbo-sacral spine were calculated and the quality was similar to AEC mode. Scoliosis occurs mainly at thoraco-lumbar and lumbo-sacral spine, not at cervical spine. Compared to AEC mode, Using the appropriate protocol (80kVp, 50mAs) of fix mode for whole spine AP radiography was thought to be useful because the image quality of the thoraco-lumar and lumbo-sacral spine was similar on AEC mode, Also organ and effective doses can be decreased with Fix mode. Therefore, It is considered that fix mode can be used properly with AEC mode for whole spine AP radiography when considering patient's body posture.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.505-508
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• 2000

The success of target reconstruction in SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) imaging system is greatly dependent on the coherent detection. Primary causes of incoherent detection are uncompensated target or sensor motion, random turbulence in propagation media, wrong path in radar platform, and etc. And these appear as multiplicative phase error to the echoed signal, which consequently, causes fatal degradations such as fading or dislocation of target image. In this paper, we present iterative phase error estimation scheme which uses echoed data in all temporal frequencies. We started with analyzing wave equation for one point target and extend to overall echoed data from the target scene - The two wave equations governing the SAR signal at two temporal frequencies of the radar signal are combined to derive a method to reconstruct the complex phase error function. Eventually, this operation attains phase error correction algorithm from the total received SAR signal. We verify the success of the proposed algorithm by applying it to the simulated spotlight-mode SAR data.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.456-466
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• 2015

We investigated an anti-aliasing (AA) filter for digital camera photography by which the excessively high-frequency components of the image signal are suppressed to avoid the aliasing effect. Our optomechanical AA filter was implemented by applying rapid relative motions to the imaging sensor. By the engineered motion blur of the mechanical dithers, the effective point-spread function (PSF) of the imaging system could be tailored to reject the unwanted high-frequency components of the image. For optimal operations, we developed a spiral filter motion protocol that could produce a Gaussian-like PSF. We experimentally demonstrated that our AA filter provides an improved filtering characteristic with a better compromise of the rejection performance and the signal loss. We also found that the pass band characteristic can be enhanced further by a color-differential acquisition mode. Our filter scheme provides a useful method of digital photography for low-error image measurements as well as for ordinary photographic applications where annoying $moir{\acute{e}}$ patterns must be suppressed efficiently.

• Proceedings of the Optical Society of Korea Conference
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• 2008.07a
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• pp.121-122
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• 2008

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.521-537
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• 2000

Ultrasonic imaging is the most widely used modality among modern imaging device for medical diagnosis and the system performance has been improved dramatically since early 90's due to the rapid advances in DSP performance and VLSI technology that made it possible to employ more sophisticated algorithms. This paper describes "main stream" digital signal processing functions along with the associated implementation considerations in modern medical ultrasound imaging systems. Topics covered include signal processing methods for resolution improvement, ultrasound imaging system architectures, roles and necessity of the applications of DSP and VLSI technology in the development of the medical ultrasound imaging systems, and array signal processing techniques for ultrasound focusing.

• Journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.512-527
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• 2018

This review provides a comprehensive overview of brain imaging studies of the brain-gut interaction in functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs). Functional neuroimaging studies during gut stimulation have shown enhanced brain responses in regions related to sensory processing of the homeostatic condition of the gut (homeostatic afferent) and responses to salience stimuli (salience network), as well as increased and decreased brain activity in the emotional response areas and reduced activation in areas associated with the top-down modulation of visceral afferent signals. Altered central regulation of the endocrine and autonomic nervous responses, the key mediators of the brain-gut axis, has been demonstrated. Studies using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging reported abnormal local and global connectivity in the areas related to pain processing and the default mode network (a physiological baseline of brain activity at rest associated with self-awareness and memory) in FGIDs. Structural imaging with brain morphometry and diffusion imaging demonstrated altered gray- and white-matter structures in areas that also showed changes in functional imaging studies, although this requires replication. Molecular imaging by magnetic resonance spectroscopy and positron emission tomography in FGIDs remains relatively sparse. Progress using analytical methods such as machine learning algorithms may shift neuroimaging studies from brain mapping to predicting clinical outcomes. Because several factors contribute to the pathophysiology of FGIDs and because its population is quite heterogeneous, a new model is needed in future studies to assess the importance of the factors and brain functions that are responsible for an optimal homeostatic state.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.88.2-88.2
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• 2013

Exploration of the wave-mode identification and its propagating property in the solar pore is desirable to study the energy transfer in the solar atmosphere. The Fast Imaging Solar Spectrograph (FISS) installed at the New Solar Telescope (NST) is a unique system that can do imaging of H-alpha and Ca II 8542 band simultaneously, which is quite suitable for studying of dynamics of chromosphere. In this study, we inspect a relationship between the cross-sectional area and intensity of the pore at continuum (-0.4 nm) near the Ca II line. We find coherent oscillations of the area and intensity. They shows out-of-phase (~ 180 degree difference) in photosphere, which implies that the oscillation is fast sausage mode. We also investigate a relationship between LOS velocities above the pore obtained from the Ca II and the Ha line cores, and find no significant difference of the phase (~10 degree) between the formation heights of the lines in chromosphere.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.310-315
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• 2009

We report the fabrication of double clad fiber (DCF) and DCF coupler, suitable for fiber based imaging systems requiring the dual-channel transmission. Unlike the conventional DCF which uses silica for both cladding layers, the proposed DCF uses a low-index polymer for its outer-cladding layer coated over the conventional silica inner-cladding layer. The DCF is drawn with a conventional SMF preform but a low-index polymer coating is used for both jacket and outercladding of the fiber. To achieve the cladding mode coupling, a DCF coupler is fabricated by simply twisting two pieces of the proposed DCF after removing the polymer-coating at contacting regions. A cladding mode coupling ratio of 30% was achieved with a contact length of 16 cm. The proposed DCF and DCF coupler were employed in a composite optical coherence tomography (OCT) and fluorescence spectroscopy (FS) system, and both OCT images and FS signal from a plant tissue are measured simultaneously.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.503-513
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• 1999

A general expression for the beam patterns of various synthetic aperture(SA) techniques was derived based on a unified SA model. This model was used to analyze and compare the performance of existing SA methods. Based on the theoretical studies, we propose a new synthetic aperture technique that is best suitable for the linear-scan imaging. The proposed method enables dynamic tow-way focusing in real imaging so that the B-mode image resolution can be greatly improved. Compared to the conventional focusing technique, the focused beam pattern by the proposed shows the mainlobe width reduced by half and comparable sidelobe levels. Computer simulation results demonstrated the validity of the theoretical analysis and the proposed SA method.