• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.69-87
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• 2006

This study aims to describe the vowel system of present-day American English and to discuss some of its phonetic variations due to regional differences. Fifteen speakers of American English from various regions of the United States produced the monophthongs of English. The vowel duration and the frequencies of the first and the second formant were measured. The results indicate that the distinction between the vowels [c] and [a] has been merged in most parts of the U.S. except in some speakers from eastern and southeastern parts of the U.S., resulting in the general loss of phonemic distinction between the vowels. The phonemic merger of the two vowels can be interpreted as the result of the relatively small functional load of the [c]-[a] contrast, and the smaller back vowel space in comparison to the front vowel space. The study also shows that the F2 frequencies of the high back vowel [u] were extremely high in most of the speakers from the eastern region of the U.S., resulting in the overall reduction of their acoustic space for high vowels. From the viewpoint of the Adaptive Dispersion Theory proposed by Liljencrants & Lindblom (1972) and Lindblom (1986), the high back vowel [u] appeared to have been fronted in order to satisfy the economy of articulatory gesture to some extent without blurring any contrast between [i] and [u] in the high vowel region.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.345-352
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• 1993

The role of magnetic resonance(MR) imaging in the evaluation of thoracic disease has been limited Nontheless, MR has inherent properties of better contrast resolution than CT allowing tissue-specific diagnosis. MR has capability of direct imaging in sagittal, coronal, and oblique planes which provide better anatomic information than axial images of CT such as lesions in the pulmonary apex, aorticopulmonary window, peridiaphragmatic region, and subcarinal region. MR is sensitive to blood flow making it an ideal imaging modality for the evaluation of cardiovascular system of the thorax without the need for intravenous contrast media. Technical developments and better control of motion artifacts have resulted in improved image quality, and clinical applications of MR imaging in thoracic diseases have been expanded. Although MR imaging is considered as a problem-solving tool in patients with equivocal CT findings, MR should be used as the primary imaging modality in the following situations: 1) Evaluation of the cardiovascular abnormalities of the thorax 2) Evaluation of the superior sulcus tumors 3) Evaluation of the chest wall invasion or mediastinal invasion by tumor 4) Evaluation of the posterior mediastinal mass, especially neurogenic tumor 5) Differentiation of fibrosis and residual or recurrent tumor, especially in lymphoma 6) Evaluation of brachial plexopathy With technical developments and fast scan capabilities, clinical indications for MR imaging in thorax will increase in the area of pulmonary parenchymal and pulmonary vascular imaging.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 1999.06a
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• pp.159-164
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• 1999

Homogeneous but distinct visual objects having low-contrast boundaries are usually merged in most of the segmentation algorithms. To alleviate this problem, an efficient image segmentation algorithm based on a bottom-up approach is proposed by using spatial domain information only. For initial image segmentation, we adopt an efficient marker extraction algorithm conforming to the human visual system. Then, two region-merging algorithms are successively applied so that homogeneous visual objects can be represented as simple as possible without destroying low-contrast real boundaries among them. The resultant segmentation describes homogeneous visual objects with few regions while preserving semantic object shapes well. Finally, a size-based region decision procedure may be applied to represent complex visual objects simpler, if their precise semantic contents are not necessary. Experimental results show that the proposed image segmentation algorithm represents homogeneous visual objects with a few regions and describes complex visual objects with a marginal number of regions with well-preserved semantic object shapes.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.235-242
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• 2004

In this paper, we proposed the algorithm for detection of microtalcification by automatic threshold decision based on region growing method. The region for optimal threshold is grown from local maximum pixel by increasing repeatedly threshold in microralcification candidate region. Then, the optimal threshold is automatically decided at the maximum value of the contrast and edge sharpness in this region. Microcalcifications could be efficiently detected as satisfied result that true positive ratio is 81.5% and average false positive numbers are 1.1 about total 299 microcalcifirations in real image. In a result, we showed that this algorithm can be used to aid diagnostic-radiologist for the diagnosis of the early phase of breast cancer.

• Atmosphere
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.51-66
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• 2015

This study was conducted to perform various sensitivity experiments using WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model in order to determine the effects of terrains of the Korean Peninsula and the land-sea thermal contrast on the formation and development of the convergent cloud band for the cases of 1 February 2012. The sensitivity experiments consist of the following five ones: CNTL experiment (control experiment), and TMBT experiment, BDMT experiment and ALL experiment that set the terrain altitude of Taeback Mountains and Northern mountain complex as zero, respectively, and the altitude of the above-mentioned two mountains as zero, and LANDSEA experiment that set to change the Korean Peninsula into sea in order to find out the land-sea thermal contrast effect. These experiment results showed that a cold air current stemming from the Siberian high pressure met the group of northern mountains with high topography altitude and was separated into two air currents. These two separated air currents met each other again on the Middle and Northern East Sea, downstream of the group of northern mountains and converged finally, creating the convergent cloud band. And these experiments suggested that the convergent cloud band located on the Middle and Northern East Sea, and the cloud band lying on the southern East sea to the coastal waters of the Japanese Island facing the East Sea, were generated and developed by different dynamical mechanisms. Also it was found that the topography of Taeback Mountains created a warm air advection region due to temperature rise by adiabatic compression near the coastal waters of Yeongdong Region, downstream of the mountains. In conclusion, these experiment results clearly showed that the most essential factor having an effect on the generation and development of the convergent cloud band was the topography effect of the northern mountain complex, and that the land-sea thermal contrast effect was insignificant.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.105-111
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• 2018

This paper presents the analysis of image quality with FHD(Full HD) resolution camera equipped DIC(Digital Image Correlation) platform for the measurement of the architectural structure's relative displacement. DIC platform was designed based on i.MX6 of Freescale. Displacement measurement based on DIC method, the error is affected by image quality factors as pixel number, brightness, contrast, and SNR[dB](Signal to Noise Ratio). The effect were analyzed. The displacement of ROI(Region Of Interest) area within the image was measured by sub-pixel units based on DIC method. The non-contact telemetry property of DIC method, it can be used to long distance non-contact measurement. The various displacement results was measured and analyzed with the image quality factor adjustment according to the distance(25m, 35m, 50m).

• Proceedings of the Korea Multimedia Society Conference
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• 2002.11b
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• pp.118-121
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• 2002

The study on shilla monumental inscription has been accomplished by many historians. However, the research on segmentation of monumental inscription image using digital image processing is not sufficient for restoration of the image. Although, many image processing methods have been proposed for region extraction in still image, there is no suitable method for accurate interpretation of monumental inscription image. To distinguish foreground and background region in the image, this paper presents new segmentation algorithm composed of contrast adjustment and median filtering, thresholding and sobel operation, as pre-processing and post-processing. The result show that background and foreground regions are segmented in monumental inscription image.

• Proceedings of the Korean Biophysical Society Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.58-58
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• 2003

The envelope glycoprotein of HIV, gp41, mediates the membrane fusion with human cells. The extracellular domain of gp41 has two helical regions. The N-terminus helical region (N-helix) forms trimeric coiled coil, interacts with the C-terminus helical region (C-helix) of gp41 to form a stable helical bundle structure. In this study, we have shown that the N-helix of gp41 has membrane interacting and disrupting abilities. It was localized into the interface of the lipidic phase and head group of the membrane. In contrast, the N-helix region with membrane fusion defective mutations could not bind to membrane. In addition, the N-helix bound on the membrane was released from the membrane by the C-helix, and the complex of the N- and C-helix did not interact with membrane. These results suggested that the membrane binding ability of the N-helix is necessary for the fusion activity of gp41, and such property is possibly controlled by the C-helm.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.55-58
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• 2011

In this paper we introduce an improved method to measure saliency values of pixels from an image. The proposed saliency measure is formulated using local features of color and a statistical framework. In the preprocessing step, rough salient pixels are determined as the local contrast of an image region with respect to its neighborhood at various scales. Then, the saliency value of each pixel is calculated by Bayes' rule using rough salient pixels. The experiments show that our approach outperforms the current Bayes' rule based method.

• Annual Conference of KIPS
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.343-344
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• 2009

The aim in this paper is to show how to extract scalp of a series of brain MR images by using region growing segmentation algorithm. Most researches are all forces on the segmentation of skull, gray matter, white matter and CSF. Prior to the segmentation of these inner objects in brain, we segmented the scalp and the brain from the MR images. The scalp mask makes us to quickly exclude background pixels with intensities similar those of the skull, while the brain mask obtained from our brain surface. We make use of connected threshold method (CTM) and confidence connected method (CCM). Both of them are two implementations of region growing in Insight Toolkit (ITK). By using these two methods, the results are displayed contrast in the form of 2D and 3D scalp images.