• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
• /
• v.49 no.12
• /
• pp.113-123
• /
• 2012

Recently, various attempts have been made to apply Intelligent Transportation System under various environments and conditions. Consequently, an accurate license plate recognition regardless of vehicle location and viewing angle is required. In this paper, we propose a novel license plate recognition system which exploits a) the format of license plates to remove false candidates of license plates and to extract characters in license plates and b) the characteristics of Hangul for accurate character recognition. In order to eliminate false candidates of license plates, the proposed method first aligns the candidates of license plates horizontally, and compares the position and the shape of objects in each candidate with the prior information of license plates provided by Korean Ministry of Construction & Transportation. The prior information such as aspect ratio, background color, projection image is also used to extract characters in license plates accurately applying an improved local binarization considering luminance variation of license plates. In case of recognizing Hangul in license plates, they are initially grouped according to their shape similarity. Then a super-class method, a hierarchical analysis based on key feature points is applied to recognize Hangul accurately. The proposed method was verified with high recognition rate regardless of background image, which eventually proves that the proposed LPR system has high performance regardless of the vehicle location or viewing angle.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
• /
• v.48 no.4
• /
• pp.116-128
• /
• 2011

In this paper, we propose the structure of a high-performance face-detection engine that responds well to facial rotating changes using rotation transformation which minimize the required memory usage compared to the previous face-detection engine. The validity of the proposed structure has been verified through the implementation of FPGA. For high performance face detection, the MCT (Modified Census Transform) method, which is robust against lighting change, was used. The Adaboost learning algorithm was used for creating optimized learning data. And the rotation transformation method was added to maintain effectiveness against face rotating changes. The proposed hardware structure was composed of Color Space Converter, Noise Filter, Memory Controller Interface, Image Rotator, Image Scaler, MCT(Modified Census Transform), Candidate Detector / Confidence Mapper, Position Resizer, Data Grouper, Overlay Processor / Color Overlay Processor. The face detection engine was tested using a Virtex5 LX330 FPGA board, a QVGA grade CMOS camera, and an LCD Display. It was verified that the engine demonstrated excellent performance in diverse real life environments and in a face detection standard database. As a result, a high performance real time face detection engine that can conduct real time processing at speeds of at least 60 frames per second, which is effective against lighting changes and face rotating changes and can detect 32 faces in diverse sizes simultaneously, was developed.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.51-57
• /
• 2012

Hepatic vessel tree is the key structure for hepatic disease diagnosis and liver surgery planning. Especially, it is used to evaluate the donors' and recipients' liver for the LDLT(Living Donors Liver Transplantation) and estimate the volumes of left and right hepatic lobes for securing their life in the LDLT. In this study, we propose a method to apply canny edge detection that is not affected by noise to the liver images for automatic segmentation of hepatic vessels tree in contrast abdominal MDCT image. Using histograms and average pixel values of the various liver CT images, optimized parameters of the Canny algorithm are determined. It is more time-efficient to use the common parameters than to change parameters manually according to CT images. Candidates of hepatic vessels are extracted by threshold filtering around the detected the vessel edge. Finally, using a system which detects the true-negatives and the false-positives in horizontal and vertical direction, the true-negatives are added in candidate of hepatic vessels and the false-positives are removed. As a result of the process, the various hepatic vessel trees of patients are accurately reconstructed in 3D.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 2007.06a
• /
• pp.329-329
• /
• 2007

Photoconductive poly crystalline lead oxide coated on amorphous thin film transistor (TFT) arrays is the best candidate for direct digital x-ray detector for medical imaging. Thicker films with lessening density often show lower x-ray induced charge generation and collection becomes less efficient. In this work, we present a new methodology used for the high density deposition of PbO. We investigate the structural properties of the films using X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy experiments. The film coatings of approximately $200\;{\mu}m$ thickness were deposited on $2"{\times}2"$ conductive-coated glass substrates for measurements of dark current and x-ray sensitivity. The lead oxide (PbO) films of $200\;{\mu}m$ thickness were deposited on glass substrates using a wet coating process in room temperature. The influence of post-deposition annealing on the characteristics of the lead oxide films was investigated in detail. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy have been employed to obtain information on the morphology and crystallization of the films. Also we measured dark current, x-ray sensitivity and linearity for investigation of the electrical characteristics of films. It was found that the annealing conditions strongly affect the electrical properties of the films. The x-ray induced output charges of films annealed in oxygen gas increases dramatically with increasing annealing temperatures up to $500^{\circ}C$ but then drops for higher temperature anneals. Consequently, the more we increase the annealing temperatures, the better density and film quality of the lead oxide. Analysis of this data suggests that incorporation and decomposition reactions of oxygen can be controlled to change the detection properties of the lead oxide film significantly. Post-deposition thermal annealing is also used for densely film. The PbO films that are grown by new methodology exhibit good morphology of high density structure and provide less than $10\;pA/mm^2$ dark currents as they show saturation in gain (at approximate fields of $4\;V/{\mu}m$). The ability to operate at low voltage gives adequate dark currents for most applications and allows voltage electronics designs.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.325-342
• /
• 1998

Two RADARSAT SAR images with different modes acquired by Canadian Space Agency to test the effectiveness of geological lineament extraction and spring water detection over the Cheju Island. Geological lineaments are poorly developed this basalt dominant volcanic island, but more linear features can be extracted when SAR and TM images are simultaneously analyzed than when TM image alone is used. This results mainly owe to the facts that RADARSAT SAR systems are able to provide data with different frequencies, azimuth, and incidence angles. Distribution of spring water along coast is poorly correlated with geological lineaments or drainage pattern, but those in middle range of mountain region are developed along geological lineaments. Detection of spring water using remotely sensed images are turned out to be very difficult to achieve. Radial shaped sea surface temperature anomaly derived from TM thermal band should be the best candidate for spring water, but the resolution is not high enough. We also investigate the normalized radar cross section (or sigma naught) converted from RADARSAT and ERS-1 SAR data but to discriminate the spring water effectively except where relatively large water mass is observed on land side. Speckle noise and irregularity in physical sea surface condition are the serious obstacles for this application. ERS-1 SAR image acquired in low incidence angle was more useful for geological lineament estimation and water body study than RADARSAT SAR images with high incidence angles. Therefore the selection of incidence angle is critical in geological and spring water applications of SAR images, and low incidence angles less than about 30$^{\circ}$ are recommended to monitor the Cheju volcanic island.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
• /
• v.21 no.2
• /
• pp.191-202
• /
• 2021

Purpose: A near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence imaging is a promising tool for cancer-specific image guided surgery. Human epidermal receptor 2 (HER2) is one of the candidate markers for gastric cancer. In this study, we aimed to synthesize HER2-specific NIR fluorescence probes and evaluate their applicability in cancer-specific image-guided surgeries using an animal model. Materials and Methods: An NIR dye emitting light at 800 nm (IRDye800CW; Li-COR) was conjugated to trastuzumab and an HER2-specific affibody using a click mechanism. HER2 affinity was assessed using surface plasmon resonance. Gastric cancer cell lines (NCI-N87 and SNU-601) were subcutaneously implanted into female BALB/c nu (6-8 weeks old) mice. After intravenous injection of the probes, biodistribution and fluorescence signal intensity were measured using Lumina II (Perkin Elmer) and a laparoscopic NIR camera (InTheSmart). Results: Trastuzumab-IRDye800CW exhibited high affinity for HER2 (K_D=2.093(3) pM). Fluorescence signals in the liver and spleen were the highest at 24 hours post injection, while the signal in HER2-positive tumor cells increased until 72 hours, as assessed using the Lumina II system. The signal corresponding to the tumor was visually identified and clearly differentiated from the liver after 72 hours using a laparoscopic NIR camera. Affibody-IRDye800CW also exhibited high affinity for HER2 (K_D=4.71 nM); however, the signal was not identified in the tumor, probably owing to rapid renal clearance. Conclusions: Trastuzumab-IRDye800CW may be used as a potential NIR probe that can be injected 2-3 days before surgery to obtain high HER2-specific signal and contrast. Affibody-based NIR probes may require modifications to enhance mobilization to the tumor site.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.479-488
• /
• 2002

In recent years the amount of digital video used has risen dramatically to keep pace with the increasing use of the Internet and consequently an automated method is needed for indexing digital video databases. Textual information, both superimposed and embedded scene texts, appearing in a digital video can be a crucial clue for helping the video indexing. In this paper, a new method is presented to extract both superimposed and embedded scene texts in a freeze-frame of news video. The algorithm is summarized in the following three steps. For the first step, a color image is converted into a gray-level image and applies contrast stretching to enhance the contrast of the input image. Then, a modified local adaptive thresholding is applied to the contrast-stretched image. The second step is divided into three processes: eliminating text-like components by applying erosion, dilation, and (OpenClose+CloseOpen)/2 morphological operations, maintaining text components using (OpenClose+CloseOpen)/2 operation with a new Geo-correction method, and subtracting two result images for eliminating false-positive components further. In the third filtering step, the characteristics of each component such as the ratio of the number of pixels in each candidate component to the number of its boundary pixels and the ratio of the minor to the major axis of each bounding box are used. Acceptable results have been obtained using the proposed method on 300 news images with a recognition rate of 93.6%. Also, my method indicates a good performance on all the various kinds of images by adjusting the size of the structuring element.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
• /
• v.49 no.3
• /
• pp.30-39
• /
• 2012

In this paper, a safe driving assistance system is proposed by detecting the status of driver's doze based on face and eye detection. By the level of the fatigue, safe driving system alarms or set the seatbelt on vibration. To reduce the effect of backward light and too strong solar light which cause a decrease of face and eye detection rate and false fatigue detection, post processing techniques like image equalization are used. Haar transform and PCA are used for face detection. By using the statistic of the face and eye structural ratio of normal Koreans, we can reduce the eye candidate area in the face, which results in reduction of the computational load. We also propose a new eye status detection algorithm based on Hough transform and eye width-height ratio, which are used to detect eye's blinking status which decides doze level by measuring the blinking period. The system alarms and operates seatbelt on vibration through controller area network(CAN) when the driver's doze level is detected. In this paper, four algorithms are implemented and proposed algorithm is made based on the probability model and we achieves 84.88% of correct detection rate through indoor and in-car environment experiments. And also we achieves 69.81% of detection rate which is better result than that of other algorithms using IR camera.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
• /
• v.18B no.6
• /
• pp.333-340
• /
• 2011

The Human-Computer Interaction(HCI) is a study of the method for interaction between human and computers that merges the ergonomics and the information technology. The intelligent space, which is a part of the HCI, is an important area to provide effective user interface for the disabled, who are alienated from the information-oriented society. In the intelligent space for the disabled, the method supporting information depends on types of disability. In this paper, we only support the hearing-impaired. It is material to the gaze direction detection method because it is very efficient information provide method to present information on gazing direction point, except for the information provide location perception method through directly contact with the hearing-impaired. We proposed the gaze direction detection method must be necessary in order to provide the residence life application to the hearing-impaired like this. The proposed method detects the region of the user from multi-view camera images, generates candidates for directions of gaze for horizontal and vertical from each camera, and calculates the gaze direction of the user through the comparison with the size of each candidate. In experimental results, the proposed method showed high detection rate with gaze direction and foot sensing rate with user's position, and showed the performance possibility of the scenario for the disabled.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
• /
• v.40 no.6
• /
• pp.47-55
• /
• 2003

In this paper, we propose a new approach to detect peculiar features of license plates using intensity vector and composite color component in order to extract license plates from parking regulation images, which is captured in various locations around the front or the rear of cars at various times and places, and in which complex background is included. We fundamentally use both features that intensity value repeats frequently increasing and decreasing because intensity is obviously different at numerics and background, and that color is uniform in the area of license plates. First, we search each row at regular intervals starting from the bottom of a license-plate image, and we set up a rough region for a certain zone in which tile sign of intensity vector changes frequently enough and color of license plate is detected enough, assuming it as a candidate location of a license plate. And then, we extract an elaborate area of a license plate by projecting vertical edges horizontally and vertically. Here, type of cars, such as the urinate and the public, is easily classified according to the color of extracted plates. We used 200 actual regulation images, which are captured at various times and places, to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. As a result, the proposed method showed extraction rate of 96%, which is 9% higher than the previous method using only intensity vector.