• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.59-68
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• 1998

Digital hearing aids offer many advantages over conventional analog hearing aids. With the advent of high speed digital signal processing chips, new digital techniques have been introduced to digital hearing aids. In addition, the evaluation of new ideas in hearing aids is necessarily accompanied by intensive subject-based clinical tests which requires much time and cost. In this paper, we present an objective method to evaluate and predict the performance of hearing aid systems without the help of such subject-based tests. In the hearing impairment simulation(HIS) algorithm, a sensorineural hearing impairment medel is established from auditory test data of the impaired subject being simulated. Also, the nonlinear behavior of the loudness recruitment is defined using hearing loss functions generated from the measurements. To transform the natural input sound into the impaired one, a frequency sampling filter is designed. The filter is continuously refreshed with the level-dependent frequency response function provided by the impairment model. To assess the performance, the HIS algorithm was implemented in real-time using a floating-point DSP. Signals processed with the real-time system were presented to normal subjects and their auditory data modified by the system was measured. The sensorineural hearing impairment was simulated and tested. The threshold of hearing and the speech discrimination tests exhibited the efficiency of the system in its use for the hearing impairment simulation. Using the HIS system we evaluated three typical hearing aid algorithms.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.13-23
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• 2010

This study was performed to compare the quality of image processing between the newly developed prototype using light emitting diode(LED) and the conventional $DIFOTI^{TM}$ system(EOS Inc., USA). To estimate the optimal light emitting power for the improved images, primary enamel surfaces treated under Carbopol 907 de-mineralizing solution were taken daily during 20 days of experimental periods by both DIFOTI systems. The results of comparative analyses on the images obtained from both systems with polarized image as gold standard can be summarized as follows: 1. Trans-illumination indices of images taken from primary enamel surfaces were decreased with time in both systems. 2. The differences of intensity of luminance between sound and de-mineralized enamel surface in prototype DIFOTI system was shown to be relatively smaller than conventional $DIFOTI^{TM}$ system. 3. From the comparative analysis of images from both DIFOTI system with polarized images as gold standard, the difference between sound and de-mineralized enamel surface of intensity of luminance of $DIFOTI^{TM}$ system was more correlated to polarized images than prototype of DIFOTI system. With the optimal LED emitting power, the control of aperture of digital camera is considered as the another key factor to improve the DIFOTI images. For the best image quality and analysis, the development of the improved image processing software is required.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.361-368
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• 2010

ACROSS device, which is composed of an implantable microphone, a signal processor, and a vibrating transducer, is a fullyimplantable middle ear hearing device(F-IMEHD) for the recovery of patients with hearing loss. And since a microphone is implanted under skin and tissue at the temporal bones, the amplitude of the sound wave is attenuated by absorption and scattering. And the vibrating transducer attached to the ossicular chain caused also the different displacement from characteristic of the stapes. For the gain control of auditory signals, most of implantable hearing devices with the digital audio signal processor still apply to fitting rules of conventional hearing aid without regard to the effect of the implanted microphone and the vibrating transducer. So it should be taken into account the effect of the implantable microphone and the vibrating transducer to use the conventional audio fitting rule. The aim of this study was to measure gain characteristics caused by the implanted microphone and the vibrating transducer attached to the ossicle chains for the gain compensation of ACROSS device. Differential floating mass transducers (DFMT) of ACROSS device were clipped on four cadaver temporal bones. And after placing the DFMT on them, displacements of the ossicle chain with the DFMT operated by 1 $mA_{peak}$ current was measured using laser Doppler vibrometer. And the sensitivity of microphones under the sampled pig skin and the skin of 3 rat back were measured by stimulus of pure tones in frequency from 0.1 to 8.9 kHz. And we confirmed that the microphone implanted under skin showed poorer frequency response in the acoustic high-frequency band than it in the low- to mid- frequency band, and the resonant frequency of the stapes vibration was changed by attaching the DFMT on the incus, the displacement of the DFMT driven with 1 $mA_{rms}$ was higher by the amount of about 20 dB than that of cadaver's stapes driven by the sound presssure of 94 dB SPL in resonance frequency range.

• 재활복지
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.225-257
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to find the application point of hearing augmentation technology development through examining the risk context experience of people with hearing impairment and the use of assistive device used as an alternative technology. Data of 355 people with hearing impairment with official disability grading was analyzed. The results of this study are first, research participants had no experience of recognizing any sound or vibration in situations highest in the order of means of transportation, material, and nature. Especially the ratio of being unable to recognize the sound and vibration of means of transportation was high, which implies the high possibility of people with hearing impairment experiencing risk. Secondly, the risk context that people with hearing impairment will most likely to experience are highest in the order of traffic accident, pedestrian accident, and daily life at home. Thirdly, the recognition of 2G phone/smart phone, vibrating digital alarm clock, light bar, vibrating wrist watch as assistive device for risk context awareness and notification was high and the satisfaction level of 2G phone/smart phone was the highest. Fourthly, the research participants had high recognition of assistive device for communication in the order of hearing aid, smart phone, videophone, cochlear implant and 2G phone and it was found that the satisfaction level and communication improvement level was the highest using the smart phone. Lastly, for the development of hearing augmentation technology the research participants recognized the importance of portable/wear convenience, price, and motion accuracy and for notification delivery means they preferred the method of using sight(text and light). Based on the results of this study policy and practical plans for hearing augmentation technology development for people with hearing impairment in risk context are proposed.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.37-48
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• 2012

"White Day", a horror adventure game that has gone down in the history of the Korean gaming industry, is not a cruel horror game with hideous monsters and spooky mood, but a Korean-style horror game with auditory effects of ghastly sound. This paper aims at identifying the positive story-telling structure through the components of the game. This study found that the game is based on a well-organized scenario by the background, events and characters. In addition, its design and story-telling structure turned out to reinforce the positive effects of the game, by not imitating the western-style splatter games. As it provides players with playful components that bear mimicry and ilinx to maximize interactive fun, White Day is a prime example of positive games that are strongly needed in this era.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.54-60
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• 2004

In order to mitigate the problems in storage space and network bandwidth for the full CD quality audio, current digital audio is always restricted by sampling rate and bandwidth. This restriction normally results in low sample rate audio or calls for the data compression scheme such as MP3. However, they can only reproduce a lower frequency range than a regular CD quality because of the Nyquist sampling theory. Consequently they lose rich spatial information embedded in high frequency. The propose of this paper is to propose efficient high frequency enhancement of low sample rate audio using n adaptive filtering and DWT analysis and synthesis. The proposed algorithm uses the LMS adaptive algorithm to estimate the missing high frequency contents in DWT domain and it then reconstructs the spectrally enhanced audio by using the DWT synthesis procedure. Several experiments with real speech and audio are performed and compared with other algorithm. From the experimental results of spectrogram and sonic test, we confirm that the proposed algorithm outperforms the other algorithm and reasonably works well for the most of audio cases.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.63-71
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• 2017

In this paper, a signal processing circuit for semi-implantable middle ear hearing device is designed using the TCBT which is recently proposed for a new middle ear transducer that can be implanted at round window of cochlea. The designed semi-implantable hearing device transmits digital sound signal from external device located at behind the ear to the internal device implanted under the skin using inductive coupling link methods with high efficiency. The coils and signal processing circuits are designed and implemented considering the total transmission and reception distance including skin thickness of temporal bone for the semi-implantable hearing device. And also, to improve the data transmission efficiency, the output circuits which can supply sufficient signal power is designed. In order to confirm operation of semi-implantable hearing device using inductive coupling link, the circuit analysis was performed using PSpice, and the performance was verified by implementing a signal processing board of an available size.

• The korean journal of orthodontics
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.377-383
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• 2018

Objective: This study was performed to investigate the effects of external tooth bleaching with flouridation on the appearance of white spot lesions (WSLs) in vitro. Methods: In total, 125 bracket-bonded bovine incisor enamel blocks with artificial WSLs were randomly divided into a control group and four treatment groups (home bleaching, home bleaching + fluoridation, in-office bleaching, and in-office bleaching + fluoridation). A spectroradiometer (SR) and digital images (DIs) were used to evaluate colorimetric parameters (Commission Internationale l'Eclairage $L^*a^*b^*$) for all specimens. Color measurements were obtained before WSL formation (T1), after WSL formation (T2), and after completion of the external tooth bleaching treatment (T3). Results: The SRbased color change after bleaching was significantly greater in the treatment groups than in the control group (p < 0.05). SR-based lightness ($L^*$) and redgreen ($a^*$) values were significantly higher at T2 than at T1 (p < 0.001), with no significant changes in yellow-blue ($b^*$) values. At T3, SR-based $L^*$ values had increased while $a^*$ and $b^*$ values had decreased in the treatment groups (p < 0.001). The DI-based color difference between the sound enamel and WSL areas (DE*DI) increased significantly from T1 to T2 in all groups (p < 0.001) and significantly decreased from T2 to T3 in the treatment groups (p < 0.001). No significant differences in ${\Delta}E^*DI$ at T3 were shown between the four treatment groups (p > 0.05). Conclusions: The findings of this study suggested that external tooth bleaching with fluoridation can alleviate the conspicuity of WSLs.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.131-137
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• 2010

Today, many museums are changing their forms with ubiquitous environment. Unlike traditional museums providing only static text-based information attached to its corresponding artifacts to visitors, those ubiquitous museums provide not only artifacts' text information, but also many different forms of information such as sound or media through personal digital assistance or cell phones. However, these existing ubiquitous museums still provide each visitor only with artifact-centric information in very simple ways. Also this disadvantageous feature causes high gallery congestion problem resulting from providing a uniform path for every visitor. These limitations may be the biggest barrier to providing more various and useful information about artifacts to visitors through considering each visitor's preference. This paper propose a new optimal viewing path search algorithm to provide comfortable museum viewing for each visitor according to its preference. Also, a new congestion control method is developed to protect visitors from being put in some hot spots on their museum viewing, improving its comfort to a maximum.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.819-825
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• 2014

In this paper, monaural ambient component extraction algorithm based on nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is described. The ambience component extraction algorithm in this paper is developed for audio upmixing system; Recent researches have shown that they can enhance listener envelopment if the extracted ambient signal is applied into the multichannel audio upmixing system. However, the conventional method stores all of the audio signal and processes all at once, so it cannot be applied to streaming system and digital signal processor (DSP) system. In this paper, the ambient component extraction algorithm based on on-line nonnegative matrix factorization is developed and evaluated to solve the problem. As a result of analysis of the processed signal with spectral flatness measures in the experiment, it was shown that the developed system can extract the ambient signal similarly with the conventional batch process system.