• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2017.11a
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• pp.218-220
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• 2017

Recently, stitching techniques are used for obtaining wide FOV, e.g., panorama contents, from normal cameras. Despite many proposed algorithms, the no objective quality evaluation method is developed, so the comparison of algorithms are performed only in subjective way. The paper proposes a 'Delaunay-triangulation based objective assessment method' for evaluating the geometric and photometric distortions of stitched or warped images. The reference and target images are segmented by Delaunay-triangulation based on matched points between two images, the average Euclidian distance is used for geometric distortion measure, and the average or histogram of PSNR for photometric measure. We shows preliminary results with several test images and stitching methods for demonstrate the benefits and application.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2009.01a
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• pp.233-237
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• 2009

This paper represents a new approach which addresses quality degradation of a synthesized view, when a virtual camera moves forward. Generally, interpolation technique using only two neighboring views is used when a virtual view is synthesized. Because a size of the object increases when the virtual camera moves forward, most methods solved this by interpolation in order to synthesize a virtual view. However, as it generates a degraded view such as blurred images, we prevent a synthesized view from being blurred by using more cameras in multiview camera configuration. That is, we solve this by applying super-resolution concept which reconstructs a high resolution image from several low resolution images. Therefore, data fusion is executed by geometric warping using a disparity of the multiple images followed by deblur operation. Experimental results show that the image quality can further be improved by reducing blur in comparison with interpolation method.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.9 no.10
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• pp.4108-4125
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• 2015

This paper presents a scalable coding method for depth images by considering the quality of synthesized images in virtual views. First, we design a new edge detection algorithm that is based on calculating the depth difference between two neighboring pixels within the depth map. By choosing different thresholds, this algorithm generates a scalable bit stream that puts larger depth differences in front, followed by smaller depth differences. A scalable scheme is also designed for coding depth pixels through a layered sampling structure. At the receiver side, the full-resolution depth image is reconstructed from the received bits by solving a partial-differential-equation (PDE). Experimental results show that the proposed method improves the rate-distortion performance of synthesized images at virtual views and achieves better visual quality.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• fall
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• pp.41-44
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• 2021

In this paper, we propose an efficient reference-based compression artifact reduction network for 360-degree images in an equi-rectangular projection (ERP) domain. In our insight, conventional image restoration methods cannot be applied straightforwardly to 360-degree images due to the spherical distortion. To address this problem, we propose an adaptive disparity estimator using a deformable convolution to exploit correlation among 360-degree images. With the help of the proposed convolution, the disparity estimator establishes the spatial correspondence successfully between the ERPs and extract matched textures to be used for image restoration. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm provides reliable high-quality textures from the reference and improves the quality of the restored image as compared to the state-of-the-art single image restoration methods.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.132-148
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• 2013

Via the Internet, the information infrastructure of modern health care has already established medical information systems to share electronic health records among patients and health care providers. Data hiding plays an important role to protect medical images. Because modern medical devices have improved, high resolutions of medical images are provided to detect early diseases. The high quality medical images are used to recognize complicated anatomical structures such as soft tissues, muscles, and internal organs to support diagnosis of diseases. For instance, 16-bit depth medical images will provide 65,536 discrete levels to show more details of anatomical structures. In general, the feature of low utilization rate of intensity in 16-bit depth will be utilized to handle overflow/underflow problem. Nowadays, most of data hiding algorithms are still experimenting on 8-bit depth medical images. We proposed a novel reversible data hiding scheme testing on 16-bit depth CT and MRI medical image. And the peak point and zero point of a histogram are applied to embed secret message k bits without salt-and-pepper.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.558-567
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• 1999

X-ray laminography and DT(digital tomosynthesis) that can form a cross-sectional image of 3-D objects promis to be good solutions for inspecting interior defects of industrial products. DT is a kind of laminography technique and the difference is in the fact that it synthesizes the several projected images by use of the digitized memory and computation. The quality of images acquired from the DT system varies according to image synthesizing methods, the number of images used in image synthesizing, and X-ray projection angles. In this paper, a new image synthesizing method named 'log-root method' is proposed to get clear and accurate cross-sectional images, which can reduce both artifact and blurring generated by materials out of focal plane. To evaluate the quality of cross-sectional images, two evaluating criteria : (1) shape accuracy and (2) clearness of the cross-sectional images are defined. Based on these criteria, a series of simulations are performed, and the results show the superiority of the new synthesizing method over the existing ones such as averaging and minimum methods.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.62 no.1
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• pp.8.1-8.6
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• 2022

The aim of this prospective study was to investigate the effects of focal spot size of X-ray tube on sharpness of clinical radiographic images of dogs and cats. Radiographic images of 24 stifle joints, 15 carpi, 18 lumbar spines, 61 thoraxes, and 47 abdomens of 102 dogs and 4 cats were obtained in the present study, using 2 X-ray tubes with nominal focal spots of 2.0 mm and 0.6 mm, respectively. The sharpness of specific anatomical structures in all the images of 5 projections was assessed. The radiographic sharpness of various anatomical structures of lumbar spine and cortex of stifle with fine focal spot was increased significantly compared with broad focal spot images. In addition, the blurred motion was significantly higher in the fine focal spot images of thorax. In conclusion, our study suggests that a selective use of fine foci for imaging of lumbar spine or cortex of stifle enhanced radiographic sharpness.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.331-351
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• 2021

Underwater images are very much different from images taken on land, due to the presence of a higher disturbance ratio caused by the presence of water medium between the camera and the target object. These distortions and noises result in unclear details and reduced quality of the output image. An underwater image restoration method is proposed in this paper, which uses blurriness information, background light neutralization information, and red-light intensity to estimate depth. The transmission map is then estimated using the derived depth map, by considering separate attenuation coefficients for direct and backscattered signals. The estimated transmission map and estimated background light are then used to recover the scene radiance. Qualitative and quantitative analysis have been used to compare the performance of the proposed method against other state-of-the-art restoration methods. It has been shown that the proposed method can yield good quality restored underwater images. The proposed method has also been evaluated using different qualitative metrics, and results have shown that method is highly capable of restoring underwater images with different conditions. The results are significant and show the applicability of the proposed method for underwater image restoration work.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.32-40
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• 2022

Underwater optical images face various limitations that degrade the image quality compared with optical images taken in our atmosphere. Attenuation according to the wavelength of light and reflection by very small floating objects cause low contrast, blurry clarity, and color degradation in underwater images. We constructed an image data of the Korean sea and enhanced it by learning the characteristics of underwater images using the deep learning techniques of CycleGAN (cycle-consistent adversarial network), UGAN (underwater GAN), FUnIE-GAN (fast underwater image enhancement GAN). In addition, the underwater optical image was enhanced using the image processing technique of Image Fusion. For a quantitative performance comparison, UIQM (underwater image quality measure), which evaluates the performance of the enhancement in terms of colorfulness, sharpness, and contrast, and UCIQE (underwater color image quality evaluation), which evaluates the performance in terms of chroma, luminance, and saturation were calculated. For 100 underwater images taken in Korean seas, the average UIQMs of CycleGAN, UGAN, and FUnIE-GAN were 3.91, 3.42, and 2.66, respectively, and the average UCIQEs were measured to be 29.9, 26.77, and 22.88, respectively. The average UIQM and UCIQE of Image Fusion were 3.63 and 23.59, respectively. CycleGAN and UGAN qualitatively and quantitatively improved the image quality in various underwater environments, and FUnIE-GAN had performance differences depending on the underwater environment. Image Fusion showed good performance in terms of color correction and sharpness enhancement. It is expected that this method can be used for monitoring underwater works and the autonomous operation of unmanned vehicles by improving the visibility of underwater situations more accurately.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.770-773
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• 2015

The contrast of the intensity components of color images usually needs to be improved in order to enhance the visual quality of color images. However, pure color regions can be saturated due to the excessive enhancement of that color. In this paper, a new method for enhancing the visual quality of color images using saturation components in the HSI color space is proposed, and the same enhancement technique in the YCbCr color space is proposed. Computer simulations show that the proposed method provides improved visual quality compared to the conventional methods.