• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.2715-2720
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• 2014

Median filtering is very effective to remove impulse type noises, so it has been widely used in many signal processing applications. However, due to the time complexity of its non-linearity, median filtering is often used using a small filter window size. A lot of work has been done on devising fast median filtering algorithms, but most of them can be efficiently applied to input data with finite integer values like images. Little work has been carried out on fast 2-d median filtering algorithms that can deal with real-valued 2-d data. In this paper, a fast and simple median 2-d filter is presented, and its performance is compared with the Matlab's 2-d median filter and a heap-based 2-d median filter. The proposed algorithm is shown to be much faster than the Matlab's 2-d median filter and consistently faster than the heap-based algorithm that is much more complicated than the proposed one. Also, a more efficient median filtering scheme for 2-d real valued data with a finite range of values is presented that uses higher-bit integer 2-d median filtering with negligible quantization errors.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.35-41
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• 2020

Fast Fourier transform (FFT) processors have been widely used in various application such as communications, image, and biomedical signal processing. Especially, high-performance and low-power FFT processing is indispensable in OFDM-based communication systems. This paper presents a novel radix-26 FFT algorithm with low computational complexity and high hardware efficiency. Applying a 7-dimensional index mapping, the twiddle factor is decomposed and then radix-26 FFT algorithm is derived. The proposed algorithm has a simple twiddle factor sequence and a small number of complex multiplications, which can reduce the memory size for storing the twiddle factor. When the coefficient of twiddle factor is small, complex constant multipliers can be used efficiently instead of complex multipliers. Complex constant multipliers can be designed more efficiently using canonic signed digit (CSD) and common subexpression elimination (CSE) algorithm. An efficient complex constant multiplier design method for the twiddle factor multiplication used in the proposed radix-26 algorithm is proposed applying CSD and CSE algorithm. To evaluate performance of the previous and the proposed methods, 256-point single-path delay feedback (SDF) FFT is designed and synthesized into FPGA. The proposed algorithm uses about 10% less hardware than the previous algorithm.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.270-279
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• 2005

Under the research project supported by Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), we have conducted the development of GPR systems for landmine detection. Until 2005, we have finished development of two prototype GPR systems, namely ALIS (Advanced Landmine Imaging System) and SAR-GPR (Synthetic Aperture Radar-Ground Penetrating Radar). ALIS is a novel landmine detection sensor system combined with a metal detector and GPR. This is a hand-held equipment, which has a sensor position tracking system, and can visualize the sensor output in real time. In order to achieve the sensor tracking system, ALIS needs only one CCD camera attached on the sensor handle. The CCD image is superimposed with the GPR and metal detector signal, and the detection and identification of buried targets is quite easy and reliable. Field evaluation test of ALIS was conducted in December 2004 in Afghanistan, and we demonstrated that it can detect buried antipersonnel landmines, and can also discriminate metal fragments from landmines. SAR-GPR (Synthetic Aperture Radar-Ground Penetrating Radar) is a machine mounted sensor system composed of B GPR and a metal detector. The GPR employs an array antenna for advanced signal processing for better subsurface imaging. SAR-GPR combined with synthetic aperture radar algorithm, can suppress clutter and can image buried objects in strongly inhomogeneous material. SAR-GPR is a stepped frequency radar system, whose RF component is a newly developed compact vector network analyzers. The size of the system is 30cm x 30cm x 30 cm, composed from six Vivaldi antennas and three vector network analyzers. The weight of the system is 17 kg, and it can be mounted on a robotic arm on a small unmanned vehicle. The field test of this system was carried out in March 2005 in Japan.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.41-50
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• 2022

In this paper, a method to directly calculate the major elements of skin color such as melanin and hemoglobin from the RGB signal of the camera is proposed. The main elements of skin color typically measure spectral reflectance using specific equipment, and reconfigure the values at some wavelengths of the measured light. The values calculated by this method include such things as melanin index and erythema index, and require special equipment such as a spectral reflectance measuring device or a multi-spectral camera. It is difficult to find a direct calculation method for such component elements from a general digital camera, and a method of indirectly calculating the concentration of melanin and hemoglobin using independent component analysis has been proposed. This method targets a region of a certain RGB image, extracts characteristic vectors of melanin and hemoglobin, and calculates the concentration in a manner similar to that of Principal Component Analysis. The disadvantage of this method is that it is difficult to directly calculate the pixel unit because a group of pixels in a certain area is used as an input, and since the extracted feature vector is implemented by an optimization method, it tends to be calculated with a different value each time it is executed. The final calculation is determined in the form of an image representing the components of melanin and hemoglobin by converting it back to the RGB coordinate system without using the feature vector itself. In order to improve the disadvantages of this method, the proposed method is to calculate the component values of melanin and hemoglobin in a feature space rather than an RGB coordinate system using a feature vector, and calculate the spectral reflectance corresponding to the skin color using a general digital camera. Methods and methods of calculating detailed components constituting skin pigments such as melanin, oxidized hemoglobin, deoxidized hemoglobin, and carotenoid using spectral reflectance. The proposed method does not require special equipment such as a spectral reflectance measuring device or a multi-spectral camera, and unlike the existing method, direct calculation of the pixel unit is possible, and the same characteristics can be obtained even in repeated execution. The standard diviation of density for melanin and hemoglobin of proposed method was 15% compared to conventional and therefore gives 6 times stable.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.8-16
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• 1999

In terms of high resolution, seismic reflection survey is by far the most significant geophysical method applied to define subsurface structure. In shallow seismic reflection survey, it is, however, difficult to obtain high resolution image due to both the wave attenuation in the unconsolidated layer and the existence of source-generated surface waves Therefore, when collecting data, it is imperative to select proper equipments and choose optimum field data acquisition parameters for acquiring high S/N data. In this survey, a small size hammer was used as a low energy source and 40-Hz vertical geophones were used as receivers. Trigger signal was obtained from the hammer starter attached in the aluminum plate and thus it was possible to control the source onset time for the vertical stack. During the field work, a modified standard CMP technique was introduced to achieve the many-fold CMP data effectively. Data processing was conducted by the 'Seismic Unix' which is mounted on PC with a Linux operating system. The main distinctions were the emphasis and detail placed on near-surface velocity analysis and the extra care exercised in muting.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.143-151
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• 2016

The aim of this study is to investigate the optimal algorithm to extract medical radiation induced pixel signal from complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensors of smartphones camera. The pixel intensity and pixel number of smartphone camera were measured as the X-ray dose was increased. The front camera of the smartphone camera has low noise property and excellent dose response as compared to the back camera of the smartphone. The indirect method which uses scintillation crystal in front of the smartphone camera, couldn't improve the X-ray detection efficiency as compared to the direct method which does not use any scintillator in front of the smartphone camera. When we used the algorithm which employing threshold level on the pixel intensity and pixel number, the dose linearity was more higher for the pixel intensity rather for the pixel number. The use of pixel intensity of Y color component which represents the grey scale, would be efficient in terms of the radiation detection efficiency and reducing the complexity of the image processing. We expect that the radiation dose monitoring can be managed effectively and systematically by using the proposed radiation detection algorithm, thus eventually will contribute to the public healthcare.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.115-120
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• 2010

Purpose : To separate and evaluate the low frequency spontaneous fluctuation BOLD signals from the functional magnetic resonance imaging data using sensorimotor active task. Materials and Methods : Twenty female archery players and twenty three control subjects were included in this study. Finger-tapping task consisted of three cycles of right finger tapping, with a subsequent 30 second rest. Blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) data were collected using $T2^*$-weighted echo planar imaging at a 3.0 T scanner. A 3-D FSPGR T1-weighted images were used for structural reference. Image processing and statistical analyses were performed using SPM5 for active finger-tapping task and GIFT program was used for statistical analyses of low frequency spontaneous fluctuation BOLD signal. Results : Both groups showed the activation in the left primary motor cortex and supplemental motor area and in the right cerebellum for right finger-tapping task. ICA analysis using GIFT revealed independent components corresponding to contralateral and ipsilateral sensorimotor network and cognitive-related neural network. Conclusion : The current study demonstrated that the low frequency spontaneous fluctuation BOLD signals can be separated from the fMRI data using finger tapping paradigm. Also, it was found that these independent components correspond to spontaneous and coherent neural activity in the primary sensorimotor network and in the motor-cognitive network.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.258-268
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• 2001

The compression method is necessarily used to send the high quality moving picture that contains a number of data in image processing. In the field of moving picture compression method, the motion estimation algorithm is used to reduce the temporal redundancy. Block matching algorithm to be usually used is distinguished partial search algorithm with full search algorithm. Full search algorithm be used in this paper is the method to compare the reference block with entire block in the search window. It is very efficient and has simple data flow and control circuit. But the bigger the search window, the larger hardware size, because large computational operation is needed. In this paper, we design the full search block matching motion estimator. Using the DCT DC values, we decide luminance. And we apply 3 bit compare-selector using bit plane to I(Intra coded) picture, not using 8 bit luminance signals. Also it is suggested that use the same selective bit for the P(Predicted coded) and B(Bidirectional coded) picture. We compare based full search method with PSNR(Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) for C language modeling. Its condition is the reference block 8$\times$8, the search window 24$\times$24 and 352$\times$288 gray scale standard video images. The result has small difference that we cannot see. And we design the suggested motion estimator that hardware size is proved to reduce 38.3％ for structure I and 30.7％ for structure II. The memory is proved to reduce 31.3％ for structure I and II.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.309-318
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• 2004

This paper proposes the H.264-based selective fine granular scalable (FGS) coding scheme that selectively uses the temporal prediction data in the enhancement layer. The base layer of the proposed scheme is basically coded by the H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC) visual coding scheme that is the state-of-art in codig efficiency. The enhancement layer is basically coded by the same bitplane-based algorithm of the MPEG-4 (Part 2) fine granular scalable coding scheme. In this paper, we introduce a new algorithm that uses the temproal prediction mechanism inside the enhancement layer and the effective selection mechanism to decide whether the temporally-predicted data would be sent to the decoder or not. Whenever applying the temporal prediction inside the enhancement layer, the temporal redundancies may be effectively reduced, however the drift problem would be severly occurred especially at the low bitrate transmission, due to the mismatch bewteen the encoder's and decoder's reference frame images. Proposed algorithm selectively uses the temporal-prediction data inside the enhancement layer only in case those data could siginificantly reduce the temporal redundancies, to minimize the drift error and thus to improve the overall coding efficiency. Simulation results, based on several test image sequences, show that the proposed scheme has 1∼3 dB higher coding efficiency than the H.264-based FGS coding scheme, even 3∼5 dB higher coding efficiency than the MPEG-4 FGS international standard.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.409-418
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• 2021

Conformal coating is a technology that protects PCB(Printed Circuit Board) and minimizes PCB failures. Since the defects in the coating are linked to failure of the PCB, the coating surface is examined for air bubbles to satisfy the successful conditions of the conformal coating. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for detecting problematic bubbles in high-risk groups by applying image signal processing. The algorithm consists of finding candidates for problematic bubbles and verifying candidates. Bubbles do not appear in visible light images, but can be visually distinguished from UV(Ultra Violet) light sources. In particular the center of the problematic bubble is dark in brightness and the border is high in brightness. In the paper, these brightness characteristics are called valley and mountain features, and the areas where both characteristics appear at the same time are candidates for problematic bubbles. However, it is necessary to verify candidates because there may be candidates who are not bubbles. In the candidate verification phase, we used convolutional neural network models, and ResNet performed best compared to other models. The algorithms presented in this paper showed the performance of precision 0.805, recall 0.763, and f1-score 0.767, and these results show sufficient potential for bubble test automation.