• Progress in Medical Physics
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.63-72
• /
• 2008

With recent advancement of the medical imaging systems and picture archiving and communication system (PACS), installation of digital radiography has been accelerated over past few years. Moreover, Computed Radiography (CR) which was well established for the foundation of digital x-ray imaging systems at low cost was widely used for clinical applications. This study analyzes imaging characteristics for two systems with different pixel sizes through the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF), Noise Power Spectrum (NPS) and Detective Quantum Efficiency (DQE). In addition, influence of radiation dose to the imaging characteristics was also measured by quantitative assessment. A standard beam quality RQA5 based on an international electro-technical commission (IEC) standard was used to perform the x-ray imaging studies. For the results, the spatial resolution based on MTF at 10% for Agfa CR system with I.P size of $8{\times}10$ inches and $14{\times}17$ inches was measured as 3.9 cycles/mm and 2.8 cycles/mm, respectively. The spatial resolution based on MTF at 10% for Fuji CR system with I.P size of $8{\times}10$ inches and $14{\times}17$ inches was measured as 3.4 cycles/mm and 3.2 cycles/mm, respectively. There was difference in the spatial resolution for $14{\times}17$ inches, although radiation dose does not effect to the MTF. The NPS of the Agfa CR system shows similar results for different pixel size between $100{\mu}m$ for $8{\times}10$ inch I.P and $150{\mu}m$ for $14{\times}17$ inch I.P. For both systems, the results show better NPS for increased radiation dose due to increasing number of photons. DQE of the Agfa CR system for $8{\times}10$ inch I.P and $14{\times}17$ inch I.P resulted in 11% and 8.8% at 1.5 cycles/mm, respectively. Both systems show that the higher level of radiation dose would lead to the worse DQE efficiency. Measuring DQE for multiple factors of imaging characteristics plays very important role in determining efficiency of equipment and reducing radiation dose for the patients. In conclusion, the results of this study could be used as a baseline to optimize imaging systems and their imaging characteristics by measuring MTF, NPS, and DQE for different level of radiation dose.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.19 no.6
• /
• pp.1462-1470
• /
• 2015

The container BIC-code is a transport protocol for convenience in international shipping and combined transport environment. It is an identification code of a marine transport container which displays a wide variety of information including country's code. Recently, transportation through aircrafts and ships continues to rise. Thus fast and accurate processes are required in the ports to manage transportation. Accordingly, in this paper, we propose a BIC-code region extraction and recognition method using multiple thresholds. In the code recognition, applying a fixed threshold is not reasonable due to a variety of illumination conditions caused by change of weather, lightening, camera position, color of the container and so on. Thus, the proposed method selects the best recognition result at the final stage after applying multiple thresholds to recognition. For each threshold, we performs binarization, labeling, BIC-code pattern decision (horizontal or vertical pattern) by morphological close operation, and character separation from the BIC-code. Then, each characters is recognized by template matching. Finally we measure recognition confidence scores for all the thresholds and choose the best one. Experimental results show that the proposed method yields accurate recognition for the container BIC-code with robustness to illumination change.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.557-564
• /
• 2017

The purpose of the thermal imaging observation device mounted on the K's tank in the Republic of Korea military is to convert infrared rays into visual information to provide information about the environment under conditions of restricted visibility. Among the various performance indicators of thermal observation devices, such as the view, magnification, resolution, MTF, NETD, and Minimum Resolvable Temperature Difference (MRTD), the MRTD is the most important, because it can indicate both the spatial frequency and temperature resolvable. However, the standard method of measuring the MRTD in NATO contains many subjective factors. As the measurement result can vary depending on subjective factors such as the human eye, metal condition and measurement conditions, the MRTD obtained is not stable. In this study, these qualitative MRTD measurement systems are converted into quantitative indicators based on a gray scale using imaging processing. By converting the average of the gray scale differences of the black and white images into the MRTD, the mean values can be used to determine whether the performance requirements required by the defense specification are met. The (mean) value can also be used to discriminate between detection, recognition and identification and the detectable distance of the thermal equipment can be analyzed under various environmental conditions, such as altostratus, heavy rain and fog.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.299-308
• /
• 2002

We have derived an analytical expression for the sensitivity of the frequency domain small-loop electromagnetic (EM) surveys over a two-layer earth in order to estimate the depth of investigation with an instrument having the source-receiver separation of about 2 m. We analyzed the sensitivities to the lower layer normalized by those to the upper half-space and estimated the depth of investigation from the sensitivity analyses and the mutual impedance ratio. The computational results showed that the in-phase components of the sensitivity to the lower layer dominates those to the upper layer when the thickness of the upper layer is less than 20 m, while the quadrature components are not sensitive to the lower layer over the entire frequency range. Hence we confirmed that the accurate measurement of the in-phase component is essential to increase the depth of investigation in the multi-frequency small-loop EM survey. When conductive basement of 10 ohm-m underlies the upper layer of 100 ohm-m, an accurate measurement of the in-phase components ensures the depth of the investigation more than 10 m even accounting a noise effect, from which we conclude that the small-loop EM survey is quite effective in imaging the conductive plume down to a considerable depth. On the other hand, in the presence of the resistive basement of 1,000 ohm-m, the depth of investigation may not exceed 5 m considering the instrumental accuracy, which implies that the application of the small-loop EM survey is not recommended over the resistive environment other than detecting the buried conductor.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.36 no.2_2
• /
• pp.249-261
• /
• 2020

Coastal monitoring using multiple platforms/sensors is a very important tools for accurately understanding the changes in offshore marine environment and disaster with high temporal and spatial resolutions. However, integrated observation studies using multiple platforms and sensors are insufficient, and none of them have been evaluated for efficiency and limitation of convergence. In this study, we aimed to suggest an integrated observation method with multi-remote sensing platform and sensors, and to diagnose the utility and limitation. Integrated in situ surveys were conducted using Rhodamine WT fluorescent dye to simulate various marine disasters. In September 2019, the distribution and movement of RWT dye patches were detected using satellite (Kompsat-2/3/3A, Landsat-8 OLI, Sentinel-3 OLCI and GOCI), unmanned aircraft (Mavic 2 pro and Inspire 2), and manned aircraft platforms after injecting fluorescent dye into the waters of the South Sea-Yeosu Sea. The initial patch size of the RWT dye was 2,600 ㎡ and spread to 62,000 ㎡ about 138 minutes later. The RWT patches gradually moved southwestward from the point where they were first released,similar to the pattern of tidal current flowing southwest as the tides gradually decreased. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) image showed highest resolution in terms of spatial and time resolution, but the coverage area was the narrowest. In the case of satellite images, the coverage area was wide, but there were some limitations compared to other platforms in terms of operability due to the long cycle of revisiting. For Sentinel-3 OLCI and GOCI, the spectral resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) were the highest, but small fluorescent dye detection was limited in terms of spatial resolution. In the case of hyperspectral sensor mounted on manned aircraft, the spectral resolution was the highest, but this was also somewhat limited in terms of operability. From this simulation approach, multi-platform integrated observation was able to confirm that time,space and spectral resolution could be significantly improved. In the future, if this study results are linked to coastal numerical models, it will be possible to predict the transport and diffusion of contaminants, and it is expected that it can contribute to improving model accuracy by using them as input and verification data of the numerical models.