• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.496-508
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• 2017

In this paper, we propose a Tone Mapping Operator (TMO) that preserves global contrast and precisely preserves boundary information. In order to reconstruct a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image to a Low Dynamic Range (LDR) display by using Threshold value vs. Intensity value (TVI) based on Human Visual System (HVS) and contrast value. As a result, the global contrast of the image can be preserved. In addition, by combining the boundary information detected using Guided Image Filtering (GIF) and the detected boundary information using the spatial masking of the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) model, And improved the perceived image quality of the output image. The conventional TMOs are classified into Global Tone Mapping (GTM) and Local Tone Mapping (LTM). GTM preserves global contrast, has the advantages of simple implementation and fast execution time, but it has a disadvantage in that the boundary information of the image is lost and the regional contrast is not preserved. On the other hand, the LTM preserves the local contrast and boundary information of the image well, but some areas are expressed unnatural like the occurrence of the halo artifact phenomenon in the boundary region, and the calculation complexity is higher than that of GTM. In this paper, we propose TMO which preserves global contrast and combines the merits of GTM and LTM to preserve boundary information of images. Experimental results show that the proposed tone mapping technique has superior performance in terms of cognitive quality.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.608-618
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• 2007

Image binarization is an important preprocessing to identify the object of interest by dividing pixels into the background and object. We proposes efficient binarization method and a stroke reconstruction method of the low quality character image for an effective character recognition. First, the character image is binarized by using the both advantages of local and global thresholding method and then the noise elimination around the character stroke and the hole filling on the stoke by the analysis of the binarized stroke image are performed to enhance the quality of the character stroke. Proposed binarization algorithm for character image achieved an efficiency of both processing speed and performance by the adaptive threshold selection. Moreover, We could get a high qualify binary image by a stroke reconstruction of the step-by-step denoising process.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.163-170
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• 2013

In general, images of outdoor scenes often contain degradation due to dust, water drop, haze, fog, smoke and so on, as a result they cause the contrast reduction and color fading. Haze removal is not easier problem due to the inherent ambiguity between the haze and the underlying scene. So, we propose a novel method to solve single scene dehazing problem using the region segmentation based on graph algorithm that has used a gradient value as a cost function. We segment the scene into different regions according to depth-related information and then estimate the global atmospheric light. The medium transmission can be directly estimated by the threshold function of graph-based segmentation algorithm. After estimating the medium transmission, we can restore the haze-free scene. We evaluated the degree of the visibility restoration between the proposed method and the existing methods by calculating the gradient of the edge between the restored scene and the original scene. Results on a variety of outdoor haze scene demonstrated the powerful haze removal and enhanced image quality of the proposed method.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.1603-1613
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• 2017

This paper proposes a method for effectively segmenting the hand region using a widely popular RGB color-based webcam. This performs the empirical preprocessing method four times to remove the noise. First, we use Gaussian smoothing to remove the overall image noise. Next, the RGB image is converted into the HSV and the YCbCr color model, and global fixed binarization is performed based on the statistical value for each color model, and the noise is removed by the bitwise-OR operation. Then, RDP and flood fill algorithms are used to perform contour approximation and inner area fill operations to remove noise. Finally, ROI (hand region) is selected by eliminating noise through morphological operation and determining a threshold value proportional to the image size. This study focuses on the noise reduction and can be used as a base technology of gesture recognition application.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.187-195
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• 2013

Most of former studies for car license plate detection restrict the image acquisition environment. The aim of this research is to diminish the restrictions by proposing a new method of using SIFT and neural network. SIFT can be used in diverse situations with less restriction because it provides size- and rotation-invariance and large discriminating power. SIFT extracted from the license plate image is divided into the internal(inside class) and the external(outside class) ones and the classifier is trained using them. In the proposed method, by just putting the various types of license plates, the trained neural network classifier can process all of the types. Although the classification performance is not high, the inside class appears densely over the plate region and sparsely over the non-plate regions. These characteristics create a local feature map, from which we can identify the location with the global maximum value as a candidate of license plate region. We collected image database with much less restriction than the conventional researches. The experiment and evaluation were done using this database. In terms of classification accuracy of SIFT keypoints, the correct recognition rate was 97.1%. The precision rate was 62.0% and recall rate was 50.2%. In terms of license plate detection rate, the correct recognition rate was 98.6%.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.46 no.11
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• pp.66-76
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• 2009

The motion estimation in video encoding system occupies the biggest part. So, we require the motion estimator with efficient structure for real-time operation. And for motion estimator's implementation, it is desired to design hardware module of an exclusive use that perform the encoding process at high speed. This paper proposes motion estimation detection block(MED), 41 SADs(Sum of Absolute Difference) calculation block, minimum SAD calculation and motion vector generation block based on parallel processing. The parallel processing can reduce effectively the amount of the operation. The minimum SAD calculation and MED block uses the pre-computation technique for reducing switching activity of the input signal. It results in high-speed operation. The MED and 41 SADs calculation blocks are composed of adder tree which causes the problem of critical path. So, the structure of adder tree has changed the most commonly used ripple carry adder(RCA) with carry skip adder(CSA). It enables adder tree to operate at high speed. In addition, as we enabled to easily control key variables such as control signal of search range from the outside, the efficiency of hardware structure increased. Simulation and FPGA verification results show that the delay of MED block generating the critical path at the motion estimator is reduced about 19.89% than the conventional strukcture.