• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.14B no.6
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• pp.407-412
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• 2007

The performance of ultrasonic testing systems for industrial or medical purpose largely depends on the performance of ultrasonic transducers. Generally, the information about an ultrasonic transducer performance characteristics are expressed by the ultrasonic R/F signal back from a reflector and its frequency characteristics in the data sheet provided by manufacturers. In case of focused ultrasonic transducers, the two pieces of information can, however, hardly assure that the focused ultrasonic transducer would produce well-focused C-scan images. Therefore, we propose the measured size of focal spot and the reconstructed shape of effective focal zone in the focused sound field as novel measures for the performance evaluation of the focused ultrasonic transducers. The process of getting the both measures of the transducers is conducted by the implemented software including sound field scanning and virtual 3D reconstruction functions which requires the echo of a point reflector. The proposed method could, otherwise impossible in the existing method, effectively and simply distinguish superior ones among many transducers made in the same specification and be also used to detect the performance degradation due to the aging of the transducers. Eventually, the quality of performance of the ultrasonic testing systems for industrial or medical purpose is secured.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.571-575
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• 1998

One of the most significant features of diagnostic ultrasonic instruments is to provide real time information of the soft tissues movements. Echocardiogram has been widely used for diagnosis of heart diseases since it is able to show real time images of heart valves and walls. However, the currently used ultrasonic images are deteriorated due to presence of speckle noises and image dropout. Therefore, it is very important to develop a new technique which can enhance ultrasonic images. In this study, a technique which extracts enhanced binary images in echocardiograms was proposed. For this purpose, a digital moving image file was made from analog echocardiogram, then it was stored as 8-bit gray-level for each frame. For an efficient image processing, the region containing the heat septum and tricuspid valve was selected as the region of interest(ROI). Image enhancement filters and morphology filters were used to reduce speckle noises in the images. The proposed procedure in this paper resulted in binary images with enhanced contour compared to those form the conventional threshold technique and original image processing technique which can be further implemented for the quantitative analysis of the left ventricular wall motion in echocardiogram by easy detection of the heart wall contours.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartA
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• v.18A no.2
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• pp.45-52
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• 2011

In the past, a patient went to the room where an ultrasound image diagnosis device was set, and then he or she was examined by a doctor. However, currently a doctor can go and examine the patient with a handheld ultrasound device who stays in a room. However, it was implemented with only fundamental functions, and can not meet the high performance required by the focusing algorithm of ultrasound beam which determines the quality of ultrasound image. In addition, low energy consumption was satisfied for the mobile ultrasound device. To satisfy these requirements, this paper proposes a high-performance and low-power single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) based multi-core processor that supports a representative beamforming algorithm out of several focusing methods of mobile ultrasound image signals. The proposed SIMD multi-core processor, which consists of 16 processing elements (PEs), satisfies the high-performance required by the beamforming algorithm by exploiting considerable data-level parallelism inherent in the echo image data of ultrasound. Experimental results showed that the proposed multi-core processor outperforms a commercial high-performance processor, TI DSP C6416, in terms of execution time (15.8 times better), energy efficiency (6.9 times better), and area efficiency (10 times better).

• The KIPS Transactions:PartA
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• v.19A no.3
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• pp.121-128
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• 2012

This paper explores the optimal processing element (PE) configuration for ultrasonic image processing at different resolutions ($256{\times}256$, $768{\times}1,024$, and $1,024{\times}1,280$). To determine the optimal PE configuration, this paper evaluates the impacts of a data-per-processing element (DPE) ratio that is defined as the amount of image data directly mapped to each PE on system performance and both energy and area efficiencies using architectural and workload simulations. This paper illustrates the correlation between DPE ratio and PE architecture for a target implementation in 130nm technology. To identify the most efficient PE structure, seven different PE configurations were simulated for ultrasonic image processing. Experimental results indicate that the highest energy efficiencies were achieved at PEs=1,024, 4,096, and 16,384 for ultrasonic images at $256{\times}256$, $768{\times}1,024$, $1,024{\times}1,280$ resolutions, respectively. Furthermore, the maximum area efficiencies were yielded at PEs=256 ($256{\times}256$ image) and 4,096 ($768{\times}1,024$ and $1,024{\times}1,280$ images), respectively.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.109-118
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• 2000

본 논문에서는 일반적인 초음파 의료 영상 시스템에서 제공되는 단면 영상의 화질을 현저히 향상시킬 수 있는 영향 개선 기법들을 제안하였다. 제안된 기법들은 현재 대부분의 초음파 영상 시스템에 적용되는 접속기법과는 달리 한 프레임에 해당하는 RF 수신 신호들을 저장하고 합성구경 기법에 기반해서 수신신호들을 처리함으로써, 초음파 영상의 화질을 결정하는 주요 성능 변수인 해상도, 신호 대 잡음비, 주사속도 등을 개선시킬 수 있다. 제안된 기법들을 검증하기 위하여 RF 수신신호들을 저장할 수 있는 실험 장치를 제작한 후 실제 실험을 통하여 성능 평가를 수행하였다. 실험 결과 기존 시스템에 비해서 매우 우수한 영상을 얻을 수 있었으며, 시편 및 인체 데이터 경우에 모두 동일한 효과가 나타남을 확인 할 수 있었다.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2012.11a
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• pp.369-372
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• 2012

조영증강 의료 초음파 영상에서 조영제의 확산효과에 대한 분석은 간질환과 연관된 각종 병변을 검출하고 분석하는 과정에서 매우 유용한 정보를 제공한다. 본 연구에서는 초음파 영상에서 조영제의 확산 패턴을 분석하고 이를 영상화하는 방법을 제안한다. 이 과정에서 부수적으로 호흡에 의한 흔들림 현상을 보정하고 노이즈의 영향을 극복할 수 있는 방법론을 고찰한다. 호흡주기에 따른 모멘텀 요소를 고려한 ROI 추적 기법은 측정과정에서의 흔들림과 노이즈에 의한 오류를 최소화 할 수 있게 한다. 조영제의 확산 단계에 따라 서로 다른 노이즈 비율을 고려하여 동적 가중치를 할당하는 방법으로써 흔들림을 보정하였으며, 조영제의 전이 시간과 패턴을 분석하고 그 특성을 분류함으로써 간 병변 분석을 위한 효과적인 영상화기법을 구현하였다. 또한 생성된 영상에서 노이즈를 제거하고 영상을 개선하는 방법으로서 MRF 기반의 최적화 알고리즘을 적용하는 영상 개선 기법을 제시한다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2018.05a
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• pp.510-512
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• 2018

The proposed method enhances the resolution of images by removing noise using wavelet transform to remove noise from images generated by ultrasound diagnosis. We propose an algorithm to reduce the speckle noise and enhance the edge of the ultrasound image. The proposed algorithm can enhance edges of various sizes by using wavelet transform which can use both frequency and spatial information. Experimental results show that the performance of the algorithm for noise reduction of ultrasound images is about 0.45ms for $520{\times}440$ images.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.901-904
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• 2007

Nowadays, in many fields of medical treatment, we can make an observation and a diagnosis of inward disease without using a surgical operation. As one of them, ultra-sound diagnosis system can be available widely in its cost and size compared with other medical instruments. This system also make it possible for us to see the inner parts of the body in real time harmlessly for a long time. So it can be utilized to inspect the movement of heart or fetus and to diagnose an internal disease of the soft tissues. Ultra-sound images can be generated by the reflexive and scattered wave through the pulse generator and so in ultrasound images there exist inherently many affective noised signals. In this paper, we are to take an noise-restrained image and to extract a more affective regions of the images.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.3 no.6
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• pp.231-236
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• 2014

The transit time of contrast agents and the parameters of time-intensity curves in ultrasonography are important factors to diagnose various diseases of a digestive organ. We have implemented an automatic parametric imaging method to overcome the difficulty of the diagnosis by naked eyes. However, the micro-bubble noise and the respiratory motions may degrade the reliability of the parameter images. In this paper, we introduce an optimization technique based on MRF(Markov Random Field) model to enhance the quality of the parameter images, and present an image tracking algorithm to compensate the image distortion by respiratory motions. A method to extract the respiration periods from the ultrasound image sequence has been developed. We have implemented the ROI(Region of Interest) tracking algorithm using the dynamic weights and a momentum factor based on these periods. An energy function is defined for the Gibbs sampler of the image enhancement method. Through the experiments using the data to diagnose liver lesions, we have shown that the proposed method improves the quality of the parametric images.