• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.26 no.3 s.43
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• pp.457-468
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• 1993

This study was conducted to investigate the repeat test rate for diagnosis at a tertiary hospital for the outpatients who were referred themselves to the hospital by the clinics and other medical facilities. The study population consisted of 498 patients who visited outpatient department of internal medicine, general surgery, orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery in the hospital between March 16 and April 11, 1992. This study was surveyed by the questionnaire about the tests for diagnosis at first level medical facilities, and then, was investigated by the medical record about the tests for diagnosis at a tertiary hospital. The proportion of test among the patients who utilized the first level medical facilities was 20.9% for the X-ray test, 10.6% for the urinalysis, 9.0% for the electrocardiogram, 3.4% for the computer tomogram and 6.4% for the ultrasonogram. At the tertiary hospital, the X-ray test was 45.2%, the liver function test was 24.1%, the urinalysis was 19.1%, and the electrocardiogram was 15.7%. The proportion of patients who possessed results of test for diagnosis at the first level medical facilities was 76.5% for the computer tomogram, and 31.3% for the ultrasonogram. As the repeat test rate between the first level medical facilities and the tertiary hospital, the thyroid function test was the first rank as 71.4%, the second rank was the routine CBC as 67.9%, and the third rank was the X-ray test as 64.4%. But among the patients that brought the result for tests at the first level medical facilities, the repeat test rate was as follow : the routine CBC was 75.0%, the liver function test was 72.1%, and the computer tomogram was 15.4%.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.959-966
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• 2010

Quantitative ultrasound analysis provides fundamental information of various ultrasound parameters using spectral information of the short-gated radiofrequency(RF) data. Therefore, accurate extraction of spectral information from backscattered RF signal is crucial for further analysis of medical ultrasound parameters. In this paper, we propose two techniques for calculating a more accurate power spectrum which are based on the phase-compensation using the normalized cross-correlation to minimize estimation errors due to phase variations, and the weighted averaging technique to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio(SNR). The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method estimates better results with 10% smaller estimation variances compared to the conventional methods.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.4 no.7
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• pp.297-300
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• 2015

In medical ultrasonography, transit time and contrast enhancement patterns are considered as important parameters to analyze liver diseases. In many recent researches, time-intensity curves(TIC) have been used for calculating the transit time of the contrast agents. However, the intensity curve may include the variations which are caused by the micro-bubble effect of contrast agents. In this paper, we propose a complementary approach to diagnostic parameter extraction which utilizes a density information as well as the intensity data. The proposed technique improves the accuracy in extraction of the transit time and velocity of contrast agents for detection and characterization of focal liver lesions. Through the experiments using a set of clinical data, we show that the proposed methods can improve the reliability of the parametric image data.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.42 no.3 s.303
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• pp.53-62
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• 2005

This paper proposes a method of measuring and visualizing the elasticity distribution of the human soft tissue to detect tumors or cancers which have been difficult to diagnose in conventional medical ultrasonic B-mode images. To measure the stiffness of soft tissue, first, pressure is applied to deform the tissue being imaged, and then the amount of mechanical displacement is determined from correlation coefficients obtained from ultrasonic data downconverted into the baseband. We confirmed the feasibility of imaging tissue stiffness by computer simulation and experiment.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.279-286
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• 2024

Echocardiography is a widely used test to evaluate the contractility of the heart. However, this exam is cannot be said to be objective because the test relies on the examiner's visual judgment. Therefore, although a lot of efforts are being made to quantify the strain through speckle tracking echocardiography (STE), there are some limitations, and studies of conditions to supplement are needed. Through this study, we determine whether the general characteristics of the subjects affect vessel-specific strain and whether changes in various imaging conditions (general, resolution, compression, gain, chroma) affect vessel-specific strain. According to the results of the study, the general conditions obtained during the examination were generally less significant compared to other conversion conditions, and Resolution, Compress, Gain, Chroma, and LAD showed significant correlations under the Compress conditions (p < .05). Therefore, Accurate strain assessment will be made if echocardiography is analyzed using significant conditions for each stenotic vessel

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.43-51
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• 2010

Attenuation coefficients of medical ultrasound not only reflect the pathological information of tissues scanned but also provide the quantitative information to compensate the decay of backscattered signals for other medical ultrasound parameters. Based on the frequency-selective attenuation property of human tissues, attenuation estimation methods in spectral domain have difficulties for real-time implementation due to the complexicity while estimation methods in time domain do not achieve the compensation for the diffraction effect effectively. In this paper, we propose the modified VSA method, which compensates the diffraction with reference phantom in time domain, using adaptive bandpass filters with decreasing center frequencies along depths. The adaptive bandpass filtering technique minimizes the distortion of relative echogenicity of wideband transmit pulses and maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio due to the random scattering, especially at deeper depths. Since the filtering center frequencies change according to the accumulated attenuation, the proposed algorithm improves estimation accuracy and precision comparing to the fixed filtering method. Computer simulation and experimental results using tissue-mimicking phantoms demonstrate that the distortion of relative echogenicity is decreased at deeper depths, and the accuracy of attenuation estimation is improved by 5.1% and the standard deviation is decreased by 46.9% for the entire scan depth.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.75-80
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• 2019

During the medical ultrasound exercise at school, we randomly select parts of the ultrasound device and areas with the most contact in the abdominal phantom to detect bacteria that are above the probe and determine the number of pathogens. I want to find out. The experimental method was rubbed 20 times with the sterilized cotton swab for sterilization and then smeared on Lysogeny broth (LB) agar, put into the incubator and incubated for 48 hours, and the colony forming unit (CFU) count was measured. The bacterial distribution of probe handle and abdominal phantom was evaluated by evaluation. As a result, the CFU value is the lens was $3.0{\pm}0.87$, print button was $5.5{\pm}1.06$, freeze button was $8.0{\pm}4.95$, phantom was $20.0{\pm}2.78$, line was $23.5{\pm}2.50$, and probe handle was measured as $35.3{\pm}10.75$. In this study, it is expected that attention to infection control of equipment during practice during medical ultrasound practice can be highlighted and further contributed to the reduction of bacterial infection rate of ultrasound devices.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.693-699
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• 2023

Ultrasound is widely used in the medical field for non-destructive and non-invasive disease diagnosis. In order to improve the disease diagnosis accuracy of diagnostic medical images, improving spatial resolution is a very important factor. In this study, we aim to model the super resolution convolutional neural network (SRCNN) algorithm in ultrasound images and analyze its applicability in the medical diagnostic field. The study was conducted as an experimental study using Field II simulation and open source clinical liver hemangioma ultrasound imaging. The proposed SRCNN algorithm was modeled so that end-to-end learning can be applied from low resolution (LR) to high resolution. As a result of the simulation, we confirmed that the full width at half maximum in the phantom image using a Field II program was improved by 41.01% compared to LR when SRCNN was used. In addition, the peak to signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index (SSIM) evaluation results showed that SRCNN had the excellent value in both simulated and real liver hemangioma ultrasound images. In conclusion, the applicability of SRCNN to ultrasound images has been proven, and we expected that proposed algorithm can be used in various diagnostic medical fields.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.84 no.3
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• pp.676-685
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• 2023

Purpose To investigate the incidence, outcomes, and imaging characteristics of clustered microcysts detected on breast US in asymptomatic women, and suggest appropriate management guidelines. Materials and Methods We identified and reviewed the lesions recorded as "clustered microcysts" on breast US performed in asymptomatic women between August 2014 and December 2019. The final diagnosis was based on pathology and imaging follow-up results for at least 12 months. Results The incidence was 1.5% and 100 patients with 117 lesions were included. Among 117 lesions, 3 (2.6%), 2 (1.7%), and 112 (95.7%) were malignant, high-risk benign, and benign lesions, respectively. The malignant lesions included two cases of ductal carcinoma in situ and one invasive ductal carcinoma. Two of them were assessed as category 4, showing mammographic suspicious microcalcifications and internal vascularity on Doppler US. The remainder was a false negative case and showed echo pattern change on the 12-month follow-up US. Conclusion The incidence of clustered microcysts on breast US in asymptomatic women was 1.5% and malignancy rate was 2.6% (3 of 117). Knowledge of outcomes and imaging features of benign and malignant clustered microcysts may be helpful for radiologists, thereby aiding categorization and management recommendations.

• Journal of Industrial Technology
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• v.28 no.B
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• pp.129-133
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• 2008

A method to reduce seam line artifact in spatial compounding of ultrasonic images is presented. Spatial compounding is a speckle reducing imaging technique in which a number of ultrasound images of a given target that have been obtained from multiple view angles are combined into a single compounded image by combining the data received from each data point in the compounded image. Since different view angle results in different view area, and the images of different view arms are combined into an image, the compounded image consists of regions with different signal to noise ratio, and the boundary lines between these regions are visible as seam lines in the compounded images. In this paper, we present an algorithm that reduces the visibility of this seam line in the spatially compounded images. Design procedure for a FIH filter is described and the results of applying the filter to in-vivo ultrasonic images are analyzed.