• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.159-168
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• 2015

This paper introduces effective noise removal method for medical ultrasound volume data. Ultrasound volume data need to be filtered because it has a lot of noise. Conventional 2d filtering methods ignore information of adjacent layers and conventional 3d filtering methods are slow or have simple filter that are not efficient for removing noise and also don't equally operate filtering because that don't take into account ultrasound' sampling character. To solve this problem, we introduce method that fast perform in parallel bilateral filtering that is known as good for noise removal and adjust proportionally window size depending on that's position. Experiments compare noise removal and loss of original data among average filtered or biliteral filtered or adaptive biliteral filtered ultrasound volume rendering images. In this way, we can more efficiently and correctly remove noise of ultrasound volume data.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.6-13
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• 2006

Ultrasound visualization is a typical diagnosis method to examine organs, soft tissues and fetus data. It is difficult to visualize ultrasound data because the quality of the data might be degraded by artifact and speckle noise, and gathered with non-linear sampling. Rendering speed is too slow since we can not use additional data structures or procedures in rendering stage. In this paper, we use several visualization methods for fast rendering of ultrasound data. First method, denoted as adaptive ray sampling, is to reduce the number of samples by adjusting sampling interval in empty space. Secondly, we use early ray termination scheme with sufficiently wide sampling interval and low threshold value of opacity during color compositing. Lastly, we use bilinear interpolation instead of trilinear interpolation for sampling in transparent region. We conclude that our method reduces the rendering time without loss of image quality in comparison to the conventional methods.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.820-832
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• 2019

Estimation of accurate blood volume flow in ultrasound Doppler blood flow spectrograms is extremely important for clinical diagnostic purposes. Blood volume flow measurements require the assessment of both the velocity distribution and the cross-sectional area of the vessel. Unfortunately, the existing volume flow estimation algorithms by ultrasound lack the velocity space distribution information in cross-sections of a vessel and have the problems of low accuracy and poor stability. In this paper, a new robust ultrasound volume flow estimation method based on multigate (RMG) is proposed and the multigate technology provides detail information on the local velocity distribution. In this method, an accurate double iterative flow velocity estimation algorithm (DIV) is used to estimate the mean velocity and it has been tested on in vivo data from carotid. The results from experiments indicate a mean standard deviation of less than 6% in flow velocities when estimated for a range of SNR levels. The RMG method is validated in a custom-designed experimental setup, Doppler phantom and imitation blood flow control system. In vitro experimental results show that the mean error of the RMG algorithm is 4.81%. Low errors in blood volume flow estimation make the prospect of using the RMG algorithm for real-time blood volume flow estimation possible.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.247-257
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• 2003

This paper proposes a three-dimensional (3D) segmentation algorithm for extracting a diagnostic object from ultrasound images by using a LoG operator In the proposed algorithm, 2D cutting planes are first obtained by the equiangular revolution of a cross sectional Plane on a reference axis for a 3D volume data. In each 2D ultrasound image. a region of interest (ROI) box that is included tightly in a diagnostic object of interest is set. Inside the ROI box, a LoG operator, where the value of $\sigma$ is adaptively selected by the distance between reference points and the variance of the 2D image, extracts edges in the 2D image. In Post processing. regions of the edge image are found out by region filling, small regions in the region filled image are removed. and the contour image of the object is obtained by morphological opening finally. a 3D volume of the diagnostic object is rendered from the set of contour images obtained by post-processing. Experimental results for a tumor and gall bladder volume data show that the proposed method yields on average two times reduction in error rate over Krivanek's method when the results obtained manually are used as a reference data.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.289-294
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• 2022

In this study, the accuracy and usefulness of volume measurement were investigated as a phantom experiment using CT and USG scan data and a clinical trial using patient scan data. As a result, there was no significant difference between the volume of the actual round phantom of various volumes for both the CT and ultrasound devices (p>0.05). As a result of statistical analysis, it was analyzed that there was no significant difference (p>0.05). Clinical application of this result requires more clinical trials, but if a CT or ultrasound device is selected and applied in consideration of patient radiation exposure, the examiner's scanning technology, and CT reconstruction experience, the basic data in terms of the usefulness of volume measurement using CT scan image is considered to have application value.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.369-374
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• 2022

Purpose: Focused ultrasound is an emerging technology for treating the brain locally in a noninvasive manner. In this study, we have investigated the influence of skull properties on simulating transcranial pressure field. Methods: A 3D computational model of transcranial focused ultrasound was constructed using female and male CT data to solve for intracranial pressure. For heterogeneous model, the acoustic properties were calculated from CT Hounsfield units based on a porosity. The homogeneous model assigned constant acoustic properties for the single-layered skull. Results: A computational model was validated against empirical data. The homogeneous models were then compared with the heterogeneous model, resulted in 10.87% and 7.19% differences in peak pressure for female and male models respectively. For the focal volume, homogeneous model demonstrated more than 94% overlap compared with the heterogeneous model. Conclusion: Homogeneous model can be constructed using MR images that are commonly used for the segmentation of the skull. We propose the possibility of the homogeneous model for the simulating transcranial pressure field owing to comparable focal volume between homogeneous model and heterogeneous model.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.285-291
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• 2010

Recently, advance on various modalities of diagnosing, prostate volume estimation became possible not only by the existing two-dimension medical images data but also by the three-dimensional medical images data. In this study, magnetic resonance image (MRI), computer tomography (CT) and ultrasound (US) were employed to evaluate prostate phantom volume measurements for estimation, comparison and analysis. For the prostate phantoms aimed at estimating the volume, total of 17 models were developed by using devils-tongue jelly and changing each of the 5ml of capacity from 20ml to 100ml. For the volume estimation through 2D US, the calculation of the diameter with C9-5Mhz transducer was conducted by ellipsoid formula. For the volume estimation through 3D US, the Qlab software (Philips Medical) was used to calculate the volume data estimated by 3D9-3Mhz transducer. Moreover, the images by 16 channels CT and 1.5 Tesla MRI were added by the method of continuous cross-section addition and each of imaginary prostate model's volume was yielded. In the statistical analysis for comparing the availability of volume estimation, the correlation coefficient (r) was more than 0.9 for all indicating that there were highly correlated, and there were not statistically significant difference between each of the correlation coefficient (p=0.001). Therefore, the estimation of prostate phantom volume using three-dimensional modalities of diagnosing was quite closed to the actual estimation.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.117-126
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• 2008

Recent advances in medical imaging technologies have enabled the high-resolution data acquisition. Therefore visualization of such large data set on standard graphics hardware became a popular research theme. Among many visualization techniques, we focused on bricking method which divided the entire volume into smaller bricks and rendered them in order. Since it switches bet\W8n bricks on main memory and bricks on GPU memory on the fly, to achieve better performance, the number of these memory swapping conditions has to be minimized. And, because the original bricking algorithm was designed for regular volume data such as CT and MR, when applying the algorithm to ultrasound volume data which is based on the toroidal coordinate space, it revealed some performance degradation. In some areas near bricks' boundaries, an orthogonal viewing ray intersects the single brick twice, and it consequently makes a single brick memory to be uploaded onto GPU twice in a single frame. To avoid this redundancy, we divided the volume into bricks allowing overlapping between the bricks. In this paper, we suggest the formula to determine an appropriate size of these shared area between the bricks. Using our formula, we could minimize the memory bandwidth. and, at the same time, we could achieve better rendering performance.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.255-263
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• 2023

Clinical ultrasound (US) is a widely used imaging modality with various clinical applications. However, capturing a large field of view often requires specialized transducers which have limitations for specific clinical scenarios. Panoramic imaging offers an alternative approach by sequentially aligning image sections acquired from freehand sweeps using a standard transducer. To reconstruct a 3D volume from these 2D sections, an external device can be employed to track the transducer's motion accurately. However, the presence of optical or electrical interferences in a clinical setting often leads to incorrect measurements from such sensors. In this paper, we propose a deep learning (DL) framework that enables the prediction of scan trajectories using only US data, eliminating the need for an external tracking device. Our approach incorporates diverse data types, including correlation volume, optical flow, B-mode images, and rawer data (IQ data). We develop a DL network capable of effectively handling these data types and introduce an attention technique to emphasize crucial local areas for precise trajectory prediction. Through extensive experimentation, we demonstrate the superiority of our proposed method over other DL-based approaches in terms of long trajectory prediction performance. Our findings highlight the potential of employing DL techniques for trajectory estimation in clinical ultrasound, offering a promising alternative for panoramic imaging.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.62 no.6
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• pp.712-722
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• 2019

Objective : Although magnetic resonance guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) has been used as minimally invasive and effective neurosurgical treatment, it exhibits some limitations, mainly related to acoustic properties of the skull barrier. This study was undertaken to identify skull characteristics that contribute to optimal ultrasonic energy transmission for MRgFUS procedures. Methods : For ex vivo skull experiments, various acoustic fields were measured under different conditions, using five non-embalmed cadaver skulls. For clinical skull analyses, brain computed tomography data of 46 patients who underwent MRgFUS ablations (18 unilateral thalamotomy, nine unilateral pallidotomy, and 19 bilateral capsulotomy) were retrospectively reviewed. Patients' skull factors and sonication parameters were comparatively analyzed with respect to the cadaveric skulls. Results : Skull experiments identified three important factors related skull penetration of ultrasound, including skull density ratio (SDR), skull volume, and incidence angle of the acoustic rays against the skull surface. In clinical results, SDR and skull volume correlated with maximal temperature (Tmax) and energy requirement to achieve Tmax (p<0.05). In addition, considering the incidence angle determined by brain target location, less energy was required to reach Tmax in the central, rather than lateral targets particularly when compared between thalamotomy and capsulotomy (p<0.05). Conclusion : This study reconfirmed previously identified skull factors, including SDR and skull volume, for successful MRgFUS; it identified an additional factor, incidence angle of acoustic rays against the skull surface. To guarantee successful transcranial MRgFUS treatment without suffering these various skull issues, further technical improvements are required.