• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.341-346
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• 2012

In rehabilitation where ultrasonographic diagnosis is not popular, it could be subjective by medical expert's experience. Thus, it is necessary to develop an objective automative procedure in ultrasonic image analysis. A disadvantage of existing automative analytic procedure in musculoskeletal system is to designate an incorrect muscle area when the figure of fascia is vague. In this study, we propose a new procedure to extract more accurate muscle area in abdomen ultrasonic image for that purpose. After removing unnecessary noise from input image, we apply End-in Search algorithm to enhance the contrast between fascia and muscle area. Then after extracting initial muscle area by Up-Down search, we trace the fascia area with a mask based on morphological and directional information. By this tracing of mask movements, we can emphasize the fascia area to extract more accurate muscle area in result. This new procedure is proven to be more effective than existing methods in experiment using convex ultrasound images that are used in real world rehabilitation diagnosis.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.744-756
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• 2002

The transient acoustic fields formed by a 3.5 ㎒ curved linear array transducer which is commonly used in ultrasonic medical imaging system for diagnosis of abdomen are systematically analyzed to obtain new design parameters for the better acoustic image. In the analysis with an assumption of radiating waveform, element size, radius of curvature, amplitude apodization are considered as parameters giving constitutive relations with the fields. As simulation results, appropriate new parameters with the reduced curvature and elevation aperture and the apodization of Hamming window, which make an improved acoustic beam with lower side lobe levels than a conventional typical transducer, are obtained.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.9-15
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• 2011

In this paper, we propose a method to extract the external oblique muscle of abdomen images that is often excluded by previous method due to image distortion. In the preprocessing phase of the proposed method, we emphasize the brightness contrast with Ends-in search stretching algorithm after removing noise from the initial ultrasonic images. Then we apply average binarization in vertical direction to extract candidate fascia areas. After removing other areas than fascia with morphological characteristics, the lost part in the fascia during the process is restored with such characteristic information and location information. Then the skin area is also removed with information from the arc appearing in convex filming and the candidate muscle areas are extracted by overlapping two results two way up-down search algorithm. Another noise removing process is done to determine the muscle area. In case of obtaining obscure result, after restoring the muscle area by smearing method, the thickness of the muscle is measured by min square method. The experiment verifies that the proposed method is sufficiently effective to analyze the size and shape of muscles in abdomen in ultrasonography than previously used methods.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.29-37
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• 2017

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to classify patients with chronic back pain according to the degree of their back pain, and to compare the pain dysfunction index with the qualitative changes in abdominal muscles. Therefore, we aimed to provide a basis for the treatment intervention method for patients with back pain. Methods: Twenty patients with chronic back pain were purposive sample to a group of 10 patients with a back pain index of 60 % or more and a group with less than 60 % of back pain, and the subjects who voluntarily participated in the study After receiving the letter, I conducted the research the dysfunction of back pain was measured by the Korean version of the Oswestry Disability Index (KODI), and the ultrasonic wave (Ultrasound MyLabOne, ESAOTE, Italy) And the white area index, and the abdominal muscle movement was used as the exercise instrument POWER breathe K5 (Hab direct, UK), which strengthens the respiratory muscles through threshold-muscle traction. Result: In this study, patients with chronic back pain were subjected to breathing exercises, which led to the decrease in back pain dysfunction. The ultrasonographic analysis of abdominal muscles revealed that both the white area index and muscle image density in the skeletal muscle and in the outer muscle of the abdomen gradually decreased over time. Conclusion: It is thought that introducing back pain patients to abdominal muscle reinforcement training is effective in improving the functions of the patients' muscles, thus increasing their quality of life.