• The Journal of the Society of Korean Medicine Diagnostics
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.37-44
• /
• 2016

Ultrasonic imaging is the most widely modality among modern imaging device for medical diagnosis. Nevertheless, medical ultrasound images suffer from speckle noise and low contrast. In this paper, we propose probabilistic edge map for ultrasound image edge enhancement using automatic alien algorithm. The proposed method used applied speckle reduced ultrasound imaging for edge improvement using sequentially acquired ultrasound imaging. To evaluate the performance of method, the similarity between the reference and edge enhanced image was measured by quantity analysis. The experimental results show that the proposed method considerably improves the image quality with region edge enhancement.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
• /
• 1999.11a
• /
• pp.238-239
• /
• 1999

• Clinical Pain
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.86-92
• /
• 2021

Ultrasound imaging in clinical practice is one of the widely used diagnostic methods because there is no radiation risk, more cost- effective compared to MRI or CT, and possible to perform an intervention through fast real-time imaging. In order to increase the diagnostic value, the studies of contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) using an ultrasound contrast agent have been actively conducted since about 50 years ago and are being used clinically in vascularity and microcirculation of internal organs. Although ultrasound is actively used for the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases in musculoskeletal disorders, there are some limitations in diagnosing mild or small lesions, inflammatory reactions, or abnormalities at the molecular level. In this review, the principles, types, and research, and clinical applications of ultrasound contrast agents have been summarized and introduced. If we understand the characteristics of the ultrasound contrast agents and anatomical knowledge, as well as molecular changes, the ultrasound contrast agents are widely applied in musculoskeletal disorders and have tremendous potential for diagnosis and treatment.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.499-507
• /
• 2016

Medical imaging techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computed Tomography (CT) and Ultrasound (US) produce a large amount of digital medical images. Hence, compression of digital images becomes essential and is very much desired in medical applications to solve both storage and transmission problems. But at the same time, an efficient image compression scheme that reduces the size of medical images without sacrificing diagnostic information is required. This paper proposes a novel threshold-based medical image compression algorithm to reduce the size of the medical image without degradation in the diagnostic information. This algorithm discusses a novel type of thresholding to maximize Compression Ratio (CR) without sacrificing diagnostic information. The compression algorithm is designed to get image with high optimum compression efficiency and also with high fidelity, especially for Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) greater than or equal to 36 dB. This value of PSNR is chosen because it has been suggested by previous researchers that medical images, if have PSNR from 30 dB to 50 dB, will retain diagnostic information. The compression algorithm utilizes one-level wavelet decomposition with threshold-based coefficient selection.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.24
• /
• pp.10739-10743
• /
• 2015

The present study aimed at evaluating and comparing the diagnostic performance of B-mode ultrasound (US), elastography score (ES), and strain ratio (SR) for the differentiation of breast lesions. This retrospective study enrolled 431 lesions from 417 in-hospital patients. All patients were examined with both conventional ultrasound and elastography. Two experienced radiologists reviewed ultrasound and elasticity images. The histopathologic result obtained from ultrasound-guided core biopsy or operation excisions were used as the reference standard. Pathologic examination revealed 276 malignant lesions (64%) and 155 benign lesions (36%). A cut-off point of 4.15 (area under the curve, 0.891) allowed significant differentiation of malignant and benign lesions. ROC (receiver-operating characteristic) curves showed a higher value for combination of B-mode ultrasound and elastography for the diagnosis of breast lesions. Conventional ultrasound combined elastography showed high sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for group II lesions (10mm${\leq}20mm$). Elastography combined with conventional ultrasound show high specificity and accuracy for differentiation of benign and malignant breast lesions. Elastography is particularly important for the diagnosis of BI-RADS 4 and small breast lesions.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.16 no.15
• /
• pp.6177-6186
• /
• 2015

Sensitivity and specificity are the two most important indicators in selection of medical imaging devices for cancer screening. Breast images taken by conventional or digital mammography, ultrasound, MRI and optical mammography were collected from 2,143,852 patients. They were then studied and compared for sensitivity and specificity results. Optical mammography had the highest sensitivity (p<0.001 and p<0.006) except with MRI. Digital mammography had the highest specificity for breast cancer imaging. A comparison of specificity between digital mammography and optical mammography was significant (p<0.021). If two or more breast diagnostic imaging tests are requested the overall sensitivity and specificity will increase. In this literature review study patients at high-risk of breast cancer were studied beside normal or sensitive women. The image modality performance of each breast test was compared for each.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.42 no.5
• /
• pp.429-440
• /
• 2023

This study explores recent research trends and potential applications of ultrasound optical imaging-based multimodal technology. Ultrasound imaging has been widely utilized in medical diagnostics due to its real-time capability and relative safety. However, the drawback of low resolution in ultrasound imaging has prompted active research on multimodal imaging techniques that combine ultrasound with other imaging modalities to enhance diagnostic accuracy. In particular, ultrasound optical imaging-based multimodal technology enables the utilization of each modality's advantages while compensating for their limitations, offering a means to improve the accuracy of the diagnosis. Various forms of multimodal imaging techniques have been proposed, including the fusion of optical coherence tomography, photoacoustic, fluorescence, fluorescence lifetime, and spectral technology with ultrasound. This study investigates recent research trends in ultrasound optical imaging-based multimodal technology, and its potential applications are demonstrated in the biomedical field. The ultrasound optical imaging-based multimodal technology provides insights into the progress of integrating ultrasound and optical technologies, laying the foundation for novel approaches to enhance diagnostic accuracy in the biomedical domain.

• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
• /
• v.28 no.4
• /
• pp.408-414
• /
• 2011

This study was carried out to analyze the utilization of ultrasound machines in animal hospitals and focused on surveying the present condition of diagnostic ultrasound on veterinary medicine in South Korea. Total 279 veterinary hospitals were surveyed with e-mail questionnaires or telephone survey. E-mail questionnaires consist of 17 items of questions including existence of ultrasound machine, types of ultrasound machine, ultrasound examination costs, frequency, purposes, other diagnostic imaging equipments, and referring system of ultrasound. Telephone surveys asked about the existence of the ultrasound machine and types of the ultrasound machine to 279 animal hospitals. Two hundred and seventy-one out of 279 animal hospitals holds ultrasound machine. Seventy-two percents clinics purchased used ultrasonographic machines and mean years after the date of manufacture is 7.5 years and the proportion of superannuated machines are relatively high. Also many clinicians prefer single organ scanning rather than general scan technique and more than 60% of clinics perform ultrasonographic examination less than 5 times a week. Clinics located in Seoul area tend to have more expensive and brand-new ultrasonographic machines and the distribution of radiology specialist are higher in this area. Problems associated with the present condition were oversupply of machines, unequal distribution of the medical equipment in different localities, ineffective use of the medical equipment, and high percentage of old poor-quality medical equipments. There should be a viable alternative proposal to control amount and quality of the ultrasound machines. Also, the improved management system for the ultrasound machine is required.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.395-401
• /
• 2017

In this paper, we introduce a robot-assisted medical diagnostic system that enables remote ultrasound (US) imaging to be applied to the conventional telemedicine, which has been possible only with interviewing or a visual exam. In particular, a master-slave robot system is developed that ultrasonic diagnosis specialist can control the position and orientation of US probe in the remote place. The slave robot is designed to be compact, lightweight, and hand-held so that it can easily transfer to the remote healthcare center. Moreover, 6-degree-of-freedom (DOF) probe motion is possible by the robot design based on Stewart platform. The master device is also based on a similar structure of the slave robot. To connect master and slave system in the wide area network (WAN) environment, a hardware CODEC was developed. In this paper, we introduce the detail of each component and the results of the recent experiments conducted in the remote sites by the developed robotic ultrasound imaging system.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.27 no.3
• /
• pp.117-124
• /
• 2006

Recently, active research has been going on to measure the elastic modulus of human soft tissue with medical ultrasound imaging systems for the purpose of diagnosing cancers or tumors which have been difficult to detect with conventional B-mode imaging techniques. In this paper, a real-time ultrasonic elasticity imaging system is implemented in software on a Pentium processor-based ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system. Soft tissue is subjected to external vibration, and the resulting tissue displacements change the phase of received echoes, which is in turn used to estimate tissue elasticity. It was confirmed from experiment with a phantom that the implemented elasticity imaging system could differentiate between soft and hard regions, where the latter is twice harder than the former, while operating at an adequate frame rate of 20 frames/s.