• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.13B no.4 s.107
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• pp.353-360
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• 2006

This paper presents a robust algorithm for segmenting a vehicle license plate area from a road image. We consider the features of license plates in three aspects : 1) edges due to the characters in the plate, 2) colors in the plate, and 3) geometric properties of the plate. In the preprocessing step, we compute the thresholds based on each feature to decide whether a pixel is inside a plate or not. A statistical approach is applied to the sample images to compute the thresholds. For a given road image, our algorithm binarizes it by using the thresholds. Then, we select three candidate regions to be a plate by searching the binary image with a moving window. The plate area is selected among the candidates with simple heuristics. This algorithm robustly detects the plate against the transformation or the difference of color intensity of the plate in the input image. Moreover, the preprocessing step requires only a small number of sample images for the statistical processing. The experimental results show that the algorithm has 97.8% of successful segmentation of the plate from 228 input images. Our prototype implementation shows average processing time of 0.676 seconds per image for a set of $1280{\times}960$ images, executed on a 3GHz Pentium4 PC with 512M byte memory.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.68-78
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• 2021

A subminiature catadioptric omnidirectional optical system (SCOOS) with 2 mirrors, 6 plastic aspherical lenses, and an illumination system of 6 light emitting diodes, to observe the 360° panoramic image of the inner intestine, is optically designed and evaluated for a capsule endoscope. The total length, overall length, half field of view (HFOV), and F-number of the SCOOS are 14.3 mm, 8.93 mm, 51°~120°, and 3.5, respectively. The optical system has a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor sensor with 0.1 megapixels, and an illumination system of 6 light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with 0.25 lm to illuminate on the 360° side view of the intestine along the optical axis. As a result, the spatial frequency at the modulation transfer function (MTF) of 0.3, the depth of focus, and the cumulative probability of tolerance at the Nyquist frequency of 44 lp/mm and MTF of 0.3 of the optimized optical system are obtained as 130 lp/mm, -0.097 mm to +0.076 mm, and 90.5%, respectively. Additionally, the simulated illuminance of the LED illumination system at the inner surface of the intestine within HFOV, at a distance of 15.0 mm from the optical axis, is from a minimum of 315 lx to a maximum of 725 lx, which is a sufficient illumination and visibility.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.73-81
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• 1999

Scatter correction for single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) plays an important role to improve image quality and quantitation. The purpose of this study was to investigate three scatter correction methods using Monte Carlo simulation. Point source and Jaszack phantom filled with Tc-99m were simulated by Monte Carlo code, SIMIND. For scatter correction, we applied three methods, Compton window (CW) method, triple window (TW) method, and dual photopeak window (DPW) method. Point sources located at various depths along the center line within a 20-cm phantom were simulated to calculate the window ratios and corresponding scatter fractions by evaluating the polynomial coefficients for DPW method. Energy windows were located in W$_1$=92-125 keV, W$_2$=124-126 keV, W$_3$=136-140 keV, W$_4$=140-141 keV, and W$_{5}$=154-156 keV. The results showed that in Jaszack phantom with cold sphere and hot sphere, the TW gave the closest contrast and percentage recovery to the ideal image, respectively, while CW overestimated and DPW underestimated the contrast of ideal one. All three scatter correction methods showed an improved image contrast. In conclusion, scatter correction is essential for improving image contrast and accurate quantification. The choice of scatter correction method should be made on the basis of accuracies and ease of implementation.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.355-360
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• 2017

Recently, with the development of autonomous vehicle technology, the importance of precise road maps is increasing. A precise road map is a digital map with lane information, regulations, safety information, and various road facilities. Conventional precise road maps have been tested and developed based on the mobile mapping system (MMS). But they have not been activated due to high introduction costs. However, in the case of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the application field is continuously increasing. This study tries to extract information through classification of high-resolution UAV images for autonomous driving. Autonomous vehicle test roads were selected as study sites, and high-resolution orthoimages were produced using UAVs. In addition, the utilization of high-resolution orthoimages has been proposed by effectively extracting data for precise road map construction, such as road lines, guards, and machines through image classification. If additional experimentation and verification are performed, the field of UAV image use will be expanded, providing the data to automobile manufacturers and related public and private organizations, and venture companies will contribute to the development of domestic autonomous vehicle technology.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2015

Researchers have developed virtual reality environments to provide audience with more visually immersive experiences than previously possible. One of the most popular solutions to build the immersive VR space is a multi-projection technique. However, utilization of multiple projectors requires large spaces, expensive cost, and accurate geometry calibration among projectors. This paper presents a novel omnidirectional projection system with a single projector and a single spherical mirror.We newly designed the simple and intuitive calibration system to define the shape of environment and the relative position of mirror/projector. For successful image projection, our optimized omnidirectional image generation step solves image distortion produced by the spherical mirror and a calibration problem produced by unknown parameters such as the shape of environment and the relative position between the mirror and the projector. Additionally, the focus correction is performed to improve the quality of the projection. The experiment results show that our method can generate the optimized image given a normal panoramic image for omnidirectional projection in a rectangular space.

• Journal of Advanced Information Technology and Convergence
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.115-125
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• 2019

In this paper, the image is received from the camera and the lane is sensed. There are various ways to detect lanes. Generally, the method of detecting edges uses a lot of the Sobel edge detection and the Canny edge detection. The minimum use of multiplication and division is used when designing for the hardware configuration. The images are tested using a black box image mounted on the vehicle. Because the top of the image of the used the black box is mostly background, the calculation process is excluded. Also, to speed up, YCbCr is calculated from the image and only the data for the desired color, white and yellow lane, is obtained to detect the lane. The median filter is used to remove noise from images. Intermediate filters excel at noise rejection, but they generally take a long time to compare all values. In this paper, by using addition, the time can be shortened by obtaining and using the result value of the median filter. In case of the Sobel edge detection, the speed is faster and noise sensitive compared to the Canny edge detection. These shortcomings are constructed using complementary algorithms. It also organizes and processes data into parallel processing pipelines. To reduce the size of memory, the system does not use memory to store all data at each step, but stores it using four line buffers. Three line buffers perform mask operations, and one line buffer stores new data at the same time as the operation. Through this work, memory can use six times faster the processing speed and about 33% greater quantity than other methods presented in this paper. The target operating frequency is designed so that the system operates at 50MHz. It is possible to use 2157fps for the images of 640by360 size based on the target operating frequency, 540fps for the HD images and 240fps for the Full HD images, which can be used for most images with 30fps as well as 60fps for the images with 60fps. The maximum operating frequency can be used for larger amounts of the frame processing.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.684-691
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• 2001

In this paper, we design and implement a system which recognizes and tracks a human head on a sequence of images. In this paper, the color of the skin and ellipse modeling is used as feature vectors to recognize the human head. And the modified time-varying edge detection method and the vertical projection method is used to acquire regions of the motion from images with very complex backgrounds. To select the head from the acquired candidate regions, the process for thresholding on the basis of the I-component of YIQ color information and mapping with ellipse modeling is used. The designed system shows an excellent performance in the cases of the rotated heads, occluded heads, and tilted heads as well as in the case of the normal up-right heads. And in this paper, the combinational technique of motion-based tracking and recognition-based tracking is used to track the human head exactly even though the human head moves fast.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.351-360
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• 2003

This study was carried out to settle the plugging problem which occurs frequently when agricultural wettable powder is used in pest control work using the crushing and the dispersing effects caused by irradiation of ultrasonic wave. Sonication was applied to the wettable powder suspension in a beaker for 30 seconds using a 28 kHz, 200 W PZT BLT, and the image of suspension before and after sonication was observed using a microscope and a SEM. The image of tow commercial wettable powder suspensions in water observed using an optics microscope showed that the agglomerated particles were irregularly distributed over the whole observed region when stirred mechanically, while showing more uniform distribution composed of comparatively single particles in the whole observed region after sonication. Concerning the above, the projected areas of particles in the four suspensions after sonication were decreased distinctively in the observed range of the microscope and the atomization of crystals was much developed. Over the measured range of 5.6∼4,157 ${\mu}$m particle size, the overall projected area of particles was decreased to 58.3∼89.6% on the average after sonication. When the SEM images of sonicated wettable powder suspensions dissolved in water and CH$_3$OH were compared to the suspensions before sonication, such phenomena as the atomization of particles, the expansion of voids between particles, the reduction and the decrease of agglomerated particle groups, and the progress of crack developments on the surface of flake-shaped particles were observed. It seemed possible that the plugging problem that occurs frequently in pest control machine when using wettable powder would be settled by the use of sonication.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.207-213
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• 2018

This paper investigates applicability of Microsoft $Kinect^{(R)}$, RGB-depth camera, to implement a 3D image and spatial information for sensing a target. The relationship between the image of the Kinect camera and the pixel coordinate system is formulated. The calibration of the camera provides the depth and RGB information of the target. The intrinsic parameters are calculated through a checker board experiment and focal length, principal point, and distortion coefficient are obtained. The extrinsic parameters regarding the relationship between the two Kinect cameras consist of rotational matrix and translational vector. The spatial images of 2D projection space are converted to a 3D images, resulting on spatial information on the basis of the depth and RGB information. The measurement is verified through comparison with the length and location of the 2D images of the target structure.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.89-94
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• 2019

K1A1 tank commander's primary thermal sight is a device that enables tank commanders to detect, identify, aim and track the target by observing targets in all directions during day, night and in situations of smokescreen and fog through $360^{\circ}$ rotation independent from the gunner's primary thermal sight and stabilizing the line of sight even under the vibrations occurring when the tank is standstill and moving. The main function of this device is to detect and process visible and thermal images and deliver the final images to the tank commander. One of the core parts to that end is the observation window (daytime/thermal image window). This core part is mounted at the entrance of the optical path for observing the target and plays the role of making visible light during the daytime and infrared light during the night pass through the target and transmitting the resultant images to the internal optical system of the tank commander's primary thermal sight. Such core parts have been selected as depot maintenance items so that they are replaced by new parts instead of being recycled when they are subjected to maintenance in most cases. That is, the military budget is wasted because such parts are replaced by new parts despite that they can be recycled for maintenance. Therefore, this study proposed a mounting tool for polishing and coating observation windows (daytime and thermal image window) using planar polishing equipment and DLC (Diamond-Like Carbon) coating equipment. In addition, this study presented an amendment (proposal) of the Depot Maintenance Work Request (DMWR) already published to verify the performance of recycled products including the establishment of inspection standards for recycling processes.