• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.2541-2551
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• 1996

Human visual systems are sensitive to noise on the flat intensity area. But it becomes less sensitive on the edge area. Recently, many types of spatially adaptive image restoration methods have been proposed, which employ the above mentioned huan visual characteristics. The present paper presents an adaptive image restoration method, which increases sharpness of the edge region, and smooths noise on the flat intensity area. For edge detection, the proposed method uses the visibility function based on the local variance on each pixel. And it adaptively changes the regularization parameter. More specifically, the image to be restored is divided into a number of steps from the flat area to the edge regio, and then restored by using the finite impulse response constrained least squares filter.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.36S no.12
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• pp.41-50
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• 1999

In this paper, the new VLSI architecture of a reconstruction filter for morphological image segmentation is proposed. The filter, based on the $h_{max}$ operation, simplifies the interior of each region while preserving the boundary information. The proposed architecture adopts a partitioned memory structure and an efficient image scanning strategy to reduce the operations. The proposed memory partitioning scheme makes it possible that every data required for processing can be read from each memory at a time, resulting in parallel data processing. By the extended connectivity consideration, the operation is much decreased because more simplification is achieved in scanning stage. The selective raster scan strategy endows the satisfactory noise removal capability with negligible hardware complexity increase. The proposed architecture is designed using VHDL, and functional evaluation is performed by the CAD tool, Mentor. The experiment results show that the proposed architecture can simplify image profile with less than 18% operations of the conventional method.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.12 no.12
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• pp.2337-2342
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• 2008

In this paper, we propose the novel approach to enhance the visual quality of the digital image with adaptively sharpening and removing the noise. Image enhancement is performed in two ways. The pixels in the high dynamics area are sharpened by the adaptive unsharp mask with the parameter, which is derived using the statistical information of the image. On the other hand, the proposed algorithm do not perform the sharpening process in the uniform area that may cause the undesired artifact due to noise amplification, rather it performs smoothing to suppress the noise in this area. The decision, which process will be applied at the pixel, is also controlled by the statistics of the pixel dynamics. The proposed algorithm enhances the visual quality almost automatically by sharpening and smoothing at the same time with less parameter selection.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.303-314
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• 2013

Image quality of computed tomography (CT) is very vulnerable to metal artifacts. Recently, the thickness and background normalization techniques have been introduced. Since they provide flat sinograms, it is easy to determine metal traces and a simple linear interpolation would be enough to describe the missing data in sinograms. In this study, we have developed a theory describing two normalization methods and compared two methods with respect to various sizes and numbers of metal inserts by using simple numerical simulations. The developed theory showed that the background normalization provide flatter sinograms than the thickness normalization, which was validated with the simulation results. Numerical simulation results with respect to various sizes and numbers of metal inserts showed that the background normalization was better than the thickness normalization for metal artifact corrections. Although the residual artifacts still existed, we have showed that the background normalization without the segmentation procedure was better than the thickness normalization for metal artifact corrections. Since the background normalization without the segmentation procedure is simple and it does not require any users' intervention, it can be readily installed in conventional CT systems.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.303-311
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• 2003

Since the MPEG-4 visual standard enables content-based functionalities, it is necessary to extract video object from natural video sequences. Segmentation algorithms can largely be classified into automatic segmentation and user-assisted segmentation. In this paper, we propose a user-assisted VOP generation method based on the geometric active contour. Since the geometric active contour, unlike the parametric active contour, employs the level set method to evolve the curve, we can draw the initial curve independent of the shape of the object. In order to generate the edge function from a smoothed image, we propose a vector-valued diffusion process in the LUV color space. We also present a discrete 3-D diffusion model for easy implementation. By combining the curve shrinkage in the vector field space with the curve expansion in the empty vector space, we can make accurate extraction of visual objects from video sequences.

• Journal of Korean Society for Geospatial Information Science
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• v.11 no.1 s.24
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• pp.13-19
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• 2003

In this paper we discussed the processing procedures of histogram equalization(HE) method and brightness preserving bi-histogram equalization(BBHE) method in the contrast enhancement methods for the performance comparison. With remotely sensed image data of Landsat TM we compared the performances of three methods of Min-Max method, HE method, BBHE method. The experimental results demonstrate that the HE method and BBHE method are more effective in the contrast enhancement performances than the Min-Max method. In the HE method the mean brightness of the resultant output images approached to the middle gray level with regardless of input image mean. In the BBHE method, it is capable of preserving the mean brightness of a original image compared to the HE method while enhancing the contrast of original image effectively. Thus BBHE method is provided more natural enhancement effect than the HE method.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.12B no.3 s.99
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• pp.223-232
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• 2005

In this paper, we propose a novel post-filtering algorithm with low computational complexity that improves the visual quality of decoded images using block boundary classification and simple adaptive filter (SAF). At first, each block boundary is classified into smooth or complex sub-region. And for smooth-smooth sub-regions, the existence of blocking artifacts is determined using blocky strength. And simple adaptive filtering is processed in each block boundary area. The proposed method processes adaptively, that is, a nonlinear 1-D 8-tap filter is applied to smooth-smooth sub-regions with blocking artifacts, and for smooth-complex or complex-smooth sub-regions, a nonlinear 1-D variant filter is applied to block boundary pixels so as to reduce the blocking and ringing artifacts. And for complex-complex sub-regions, a nonlinear 1-D 2-tap filter is only applied to adjust two block boundary pixels so as to preserve the image details. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm produced better results than those of conventional algorithms both subjective and objective viewpoints.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.369-372
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• 2011

양 방향성 필터는 이미지표면 평탄화와 잡음제거에 좋은 성능을 보이지만 특유의 연산 복잡도로 인하여 연산 시간이 오래 걸린다는 단점이 존재한다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 고도의 병렬수행을 바탕으로 하는 그래픽연산장치(GPU)에 적합하도록 수정된 효율적인 양 방향성 필터를 NVIDIA 의 CUDA 를 사용하여 GTX 285 GPU 에서 구현하였다. 영상의 전 영역을 참조하는 대신 인접하고 연속된 영역으로의 근사화, 적은 메모리 사용량, 빠른 접근속도를 가지며 충돌이 최소화된 공유메모리 버퍼, Warp 를 고려한 병합된 메모리 접근방법을 바탕으로 병렬화 하였다. 그 결과, 같은 방식의 순차실행 알고리즘 대비 최소 약 34 배에서 최대 약 76 배의 속도 개선과 30dB 내외의 PSNR 을 갖는 양 방향성 필터를 구현할 수 있었다.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.26-35
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• 2009

In this paper, we present morphology-based step region extraction and regularized iterative point-spread-function (PSF) estimation methods. The proposed PSF estimation method uses canny edge detector to extract the edge of the input image. We extract feasible vertical and horizontal edges using morphology analysis, such as the hit-or-miss transform. Given extracted edges we estimate the optimal step-response using flattening and normalization processes. The PSF is finally characterized by solving the equation which relates the optimal step response and the 2D isotropic PSF. We shows the restored image by the estimated PSF. The proposed algorithm can be applied a fully digital auto-focusing system without using mechanical focusing parts.

• Proceedings of the Korea Multimedia Society Conference
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• 2002.11b
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• pp.287-290
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• 2002

본 논문에서는 디지털 컨텐츠 저작권 보호를 위해 강인성과 비가시성의 유지를 위한 보다 효과적인 방법으로 웨이브릿 변환에서 적응적 워터마크 삽입강도를 갖는 지각적 데이터 은닉 모델을 제안한다. 먼저 영상을 9/7 쌍직교 웨이브릿 필터를 사용해 4레벨로 다해상도 분해한다. 다음으로 연속부대역 양자화(successive subband quantization)를 통한 시각적 중요계수(perceptually significant coefficient: PSC)들을 선정하여 선택된 계수들에 대해서만 워터마크 정보를 삽입한다. 지각 모델은 정상상태의 일반화 가우시안 모델(generalized gaussian model)로 추정된 NVF(noise visibility function)로 에지와 텍스쳐영역 그리고 평탄영역에 따라 각각 적응적으로 삽입되게 한다. 이는 각 서브밴드 내의 분산과 형상계수(shape parameter)에 의해 결정된다. 적응적 워터마크의 삽입강도를 갖기 위해 에지와 텍스쳐영역의 삽입강도는 각 서브밴드의 주파수 감도(frequency sensitivity)로 결정되고, 평탄영역의 삽입강도는 영상의 국부적 특성에 근거한 통계적 가중치를 사용한다. 삽입되는 워터마크는 랜덤시퀀스로 N(0,1)이다. 여러 가지 공격에 대한 실험으로 제안한 방법의 비가시성과 강인성을 확인한다.