• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.679-684
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• 2023

Venous puncture is widely used to obtain blood samples for pathological examination. Because the invasive venipuncture method using a needle is repeatedly performed, the pain suffered by the patient increases, so our research team pre-developed a miniaturized near-infrared (NIR) imaging system in advance. To improve the image quality of the acquired NIR images, this study aims to model the non-local means (NLM) algorithm, which is well known to be efficient in noise reduction, and analyze its applicability in the system. The developed NIR imaging system is based on the principle that infrared rays pass through dichroic and long-pass filters and are detected by a CMOS sensor module. The proposed NLM algorithm is modeled based on the principle of replacing the pixel from which noise is to be removed with a value that reflects the distances between surrounding pixels. After acquiring an NIR image with a central wavelength of 850 nm, the NLM algorithm was applied to segment the final vein area through histogram equalization. As a result, the coefficient of variation of the NIR image of the vein using the NLM algorithm was 0.247 on average, which was an excellent result compared to conventional filtering methods. In addition, the dice similarity coefficient value of the NLM algorithm was improved by 62.91 and 9.40%, respectively, compared to the median filter and total variation methods. In conclusion, we demonstrated that the NLM algorithm can acquire accurate segmentation of veins acquired with a NIR imaging system.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.107-114
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• 2014

Purpose : The purpose of this study is evaluation for the applicability of O-MAR(Metal artifact Reduction for Orthopedic Implants)(ver. 3.6.0, Philips, Netherlands) in head & neck radiation treatment planning CT with metal artifact created by dental implant. Materials and Methods : All of the in this study's CT images were scanned by Brilliance Big Bore CT(Philips, Netherlands) at 120kVp, 2mm sliced and Metal artifact reduced by O-MAR. To compare the original and reconstructed CT images worked on RTPS(Eclipse ver 10.0.42, Varian, USA). In order to test the basic performance of the O-MAR, The phantom was made to create metal artifact by dental implant and other phantoms used for without artifact images. To measure a difference of HU in with artifact images and without artifact images, homogeneous phantom and inhomogeneous phantoms were used with cerrobend rods. Each of images were compared a difference of HU in ROIs. And also, 1 case of patient's original CT image applied O-MAR and density corrected CT were evaluated for dose distributions with SNC Patient(Sun Nuclear Co., USA). Results : In cases of head&neck phantom, the difference of dose distibution is appeared 99.8% gamma passing rate(criteria 2 mm / 2%) between original and CT images applied O-MAR. And 98.5% appeared in patient case, among original CT, O-MAR and density corrected CT. The difference of total dose distribution is less than 2% that appeared both phantom and patient case study. Though the dose deviations are little, there are still matters to discuss that the dose deviations are concentrated so locally. In this study, The quality of all images applied O-MAR was improved. Unexpectedly, Increase of max. HU was founded in air cavity of the O-MAR images compare to cavity of the original images and wrong corrections were appeared, too. Conclusion : The result of study assuming restrained case of O-MAR adapted to near skin and low density area, it appeared image distortion and artifact correction simultaneously. In O-MAR CT, air cavity area even turned tissue HU by wrong correction was founded, too. Consequentially, It seems O-MAR algorithm is not perfect to distinguish air cavity and photon starvation artifact. Nevertheless, the differences of HU and dose distribution are not a huge that is not suitable for clinical use. And there are more advantages in clinic for improved quality of CT images and DRRs, precision of contouring OARs or tumors and correcting artifact area. So original and O-MAR CT must be used together in clinic for more accurate treatment plan.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.17B no.4
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• pp.295-302
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• 2010

Example-based super resolution(EBSR) is a method to reconstruct high-resolution images by learning patch-wise correspondence between high-resolution and low-resolution images. It can reconstruct a high-resolution from just a single low-resolution image. However, when it is applied to a text image whose font type and size are different from those of training images, it often produces lots of noise. The primary reason is that, in the patch matching step of the reconstruction process, input patches can be inappropriately matched to the high-resolution patches in the patch dictionary. In this paper, we propose a new patch matching method to overcome this problem. Using an image observation model, it preserves the correlation between the input and the output images. Therefore, it effectively suppresses spurious noise caused by inappropriately matched patches. This does not only improve the quality of the output image but also allows the system to use a huge dictionary containing a variety of font types and sizes, which significantly improves the adaptability to variation in font type and size. In experiments, the proposed method outperformed conventional methods in reconstruction of multi-font and multi-size images. Moreover, it improved recognition performance from 88.58% to 93.54%, which confirms the practical effect of the proposed method on recognition performance.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.9
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• pp.127-135
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• 2013

In order to acquire images in low-light environments, it is usually necessary to adopt long exposure times or resort to flash lights. However, flashes often induce color distortion, cause the red-eye effect and can be disturbing to subjects. On the other hand, long-exposure shots are susceptible to subject-motion, as well as motion-blur due to camera shake when performed hand-held. A recently introduced technique to overcome the limitations of traditional low-light photography is that of multi-spectral flash. Multi-spectral flash images are a combination of UV/IR and visible spectrum information. The general idea is that of retrieving details from the UV/IR spectrum and color from the visible spectrum. However, multi-spectral flash images themselves are subject to color distortion and noise. This works presents a method to compute multi-spectral flash images so that noise can be reduced and color accuracy improved. The proposed approach is a previously seen optimization method, improved by the introduction of a weight map used to discriminate uniform regions from detail regions. The weight map is generated by applying canny edge operator and it is applied to the optimization process for discriminating the weights in uniform region and edge. Accordingly, the weight of color information is increased in the uniform region and the detail region of weight is decreased in detail region. Therefore, the proposed method can be enhancing color reproduction and removing artifacts. The performance of the proposed method has been objectively evaluated using long-exposure shots as reference.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.15-21
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• 2009

Purpose : A method to estimate a real k-space trajectory based on a circuit model of the gradient system is proposed for spiral imaging. The estimated k-space trajectory instead of the ideal trajectory is used in the reconstruction to improve the image quality in the spiral imaging. Materials and Methods : Since the gradient system has self resistance, capacitance, and inductance, as well as the mutual inductance between the magnet and the gradient coils, the generated gradient fields have delays and transient responses compared to the input waveform to the gradient system. The real gradient fields and their trajectory in k-space play an important role in the reconstruction. In this paper, the gradient system is modeled with R-L-C circuits, and real gradient fields are estimated from the input to the model. An experimental method to determine the model parameters (R, L, C values) is also suggested from the quality of the reconstructed image. Results : The gradient fields are estimated from the circuit model of the gradient system at 1.5 Tesla MRI system. The spiral trajectory obtained by the integration of the estimated gradient fields is used for the reconstruction. From experiments, the reconstructed images using the estimated trajectory show improved uniformity, reduced overshoots near the edges, and enhanced resolutions compared to those using the ideal trajectory without model. Conclusion : The gradient system was successfully modeled by the R-L-C circuits. Much improved reconstruction was achieved in the spiral imaging using the trajectory estimated by the proposed model.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.948-955
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• 2019

As interests in 360-degree VR (Virtual Reality) video services enormously grow, compression and streaming technologies for VR video data have been rapidly developed. Quality Emphasized Region (QER) based streaming scheme has been developed as a kind of viewport-adaptive 360-degree video streaming technology for maintaining immersive experience and reducing bandwidth waste. For selecting a QER corresponding to the user's gaze coordinate, QER-based streaming scheme requires the calculation of Quality Emphasis Center (QEC) distance and signaling message delivery for requesting QER switching. QEC distance calculations require high computational complexity because of repeated calculations as many times as the number of QERs. Furthermore, the signaling message interval results in a trade-off relationship between efficient bandwidth usage and flexible QER switching. In this paper, we propose an improved QER selection algorithm based on MMT protocol to solve this problem. The proposed algorithm could achieve computational complexity reduction by using preprocessed QER_ID_MAP. Also, flexible QER switching could be achieved, as well as efficient bandwidth utilization by an adaptive adjustment of the signaling interval.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.13B no.2 s.105
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• pp.77-82
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• 2006

Digital halftoning is the technique to obtain a bilevel-toned image from continuous-toned image. Among halftoning methods, the error diffusion method gives better subjective quality than other halftoning ones. But it also makes edges of objects blurred. To overcome the defect, we proposes the modified error diffusion to enhance the edges using the property that human vision perceives the local average luminance and doesn't perceive a little variation of the spatial variation. The proposed method computes a spatialactivity, which is the difference between a pixel luminance and the average of its $3{\times}3$ neighborhood pixels' Iuminance weighted according to the spatial positioning. The system also usesof edge enhancement (IEE), which is computed from the normalized spatial activitymultiplied by the average luminance. The IEE is added to the quantizer's input pixel and feeds into the halftoning quantizer. The quantizer produces the halftone image having the enhanced edge. The computer experimental results show that the proposed method produces clearer bilevel-toned images than conventional methodsand the edge of objects is preserved well. Also the performance of the preposed method is improved, compared with that of the conventional method by measuring the edge correlation and the local average accordance at some ranges of viewing distance.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.103-108
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• 2012

Recently, as the prevalence of high-performance mobile devices and the application of the multimedia content are expanded, Super Resolution (SR) technique which reconstructs low resolution images to high resolution images is becoming important. And in the mobile devices, the development of the SR algorithm considering the operation quantity or memory is required because of using the restricted resources. In this paper, we propose a new single frame fast SR technique suitable for mobile devices. In order to prevent color distortion, we change RGB color domain to HSV color domain and process the brightness information V (Value) considering the characteristics of human visual perception. First, the low resolution image is enlarged by the improved fast back projection considering the noise elimination. And at the same time, the reliable edge map is extracted by using the LoG (Laplacian of Gaussian) filtering. Finally, the high definition picture is reconstructed by using the edge information and the improved back projection result. The proposed technique removes effectually the unnatural artefact which is generated during the super resolution restoration, and the edge information which can be lost is amended and emphasized. The experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm provides better performance than conventional back projection and interpolation methods.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.143-150
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• 2014

In general radiotherapy, mega-voltage (MV) x-ray images are widely used as the unique method to verify radio-therapeutic fields. But, the image quality of MV images is much lower than that of kilo-voltage x-ray images due to scatter interactions. Since 1990s, studies for the scatter correction have performed with digital-based MV imaging systems. In this study, a novel method for the scatter correction is suggested using scatter to primary ratio (SPR), instead of conventional methods such as digital image processing or scatter kernel calculations. We measured two MV images with and without a solid water phantom describing a patient body with given imaging conditions, and calculated un-attenuated ratios. Then, we obtained SPR distributions for the scatter correction. For experimental validation, a line-pair (LP) phantom using several Al bars and a clinical pelvis MV image was used. As the result, scatter signals of the LP phantom image were successfully reduced so that original density distribution of the phantom was restored. Moreover, image contrast values increased after SPR correction at all ROIs of the clinical image. The mean value of increases was 48%. The SPR correction method suggested in this study has high reliability because it is based on actually measured data. Also, this method can be easily adopted in clinics without additional cost. We expected that the SPR correction can be an effective method to improve the quality of MV image guided radiotherapy.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.11-17
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• 2008

Many methods which represent complex surfaces using height map without a number of vertex have been researched. However, a single layer height map cannot present more complex objects because it has only one height value on each position. In this paper, we introduce the new approach to render more complex objects, which are not generated by single layer height map, using multi layer height map. We store height values of the scene to each texture channel by the ascending order. A pair of ordered height values composes a geometry block and we use this property. For accurate ray search, we store the highest value in odd channels and the lowest value in even channels to generate quad tree height map. Our ray search algorithm shows accurate intersections between viewing ray and height values using quad tree height map. We solve aliasing problems on grazing angles occurred in previous methods and render the result scene on real-time.