• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.39-42
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• 2000

In our study, by observing and analyzing normal liver in abdominal CT image, we estimated gray value range and generated binary image. In the binary image, we achieved the number of hole which is located between pixels. Depending on the ratio, we processed the input image to 4 kinds of mesh images to remove the noise part that has the different ratio. With the Union image of 4 kinds of mesh images, we generated the template representing general outline of liver and subtracted from the binary image so the we can represent the organ boundary to be minute. With results of proposed method, processing time is reduced compared with existing method and we compared the result image to manual image of medical specialists.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.12 no.12
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• pp.63-70
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• 2012

In medical image processing field, object recognition is usually processed based on region segmentation algorithm. Region segmentation in the computing field is carried out by computerized processing of various input information such as brightness, shape, and pattern analysis. If the information mentioned does not make sense, however, many limitations could occur with region segmentation during computer processing. Therefore, this paper suggests effective region segmentation method based on R2-map information within the magnetic resonance (MR) theory. In this study, the experiment had been conducted using images including the liver region and by setting up feature points of R2-map as seed points for 2D region growing and final boundary correction to enable region segmentation even when the border line was not clear. As a result, an average area difference of 7.5%, which was higher than the accuracy of conventional exist region segmentation algorithm, was obtained.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2002.04b
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• pp.634-637
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• 2002

오늘날 CT나 MR등을 통한 의학 영상 기술과 컴퓨터 성능의 향상으로 인체 내부 장기의 영상을 비교적 용이하게 얻을 수 있으며 얻어진 영상 정보는 컴퓨터로 수치와 되므로 데이터의 조작 및 가공이 용이하다. 그러나, 이 데이터는 2D 슬라이스들의 연속으로 표현되므로 이것을 보다 편리하게 가시화. 조작, 분석이 용이한 상태로 바꾸기 위해서는 3차원 구조로의 재구성이 필요하게 된다. 이것을 위하여 무엇보다도 먼저 CT나 MR을 통하여 얻어진 영상을 분석하여 특정 장기의 영상 부분를 다른 조직의 영상부분으로부터 분리(segmentation)할 필요가 있다. 이러한 Segmentation방법에는 여러가지가 있는데, 수작업의 결합 등으로 인해서 비효율적인 문제점을 가지고 있다. 이에 본 논문은 보다 효율적인 segmentation의 처리를 위하여 region-based 기법을 응용하여 새로운 segmentation 방법을 개발하였다. 그리하여, 본 논문이 제안한 알고리즘을 슬라이스 간격이 큰 2차원 복부 CT 영상에 적용시켜 간(liver)의 추출을 시도하였고 향상된 성능을 확인할 수 있었다.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.1960-1969
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• 2016

In this paper, we propose an automatic hierarchical organ segmentation method on abdominal CT images. First, similar atlases are selected using bone-based similarity registration and similarity of liver, kidney, and pancreas area. Second, each abdominal organ is roughly segmented using image-based similarity registration and intensity-based locally weighted voting. Finally, the segmented abdominal organ is refined using mask-based affine registration and intensity-based locally weighted voting. Especially, gallbladder and pancreas are hierarchically refined using location information of neighbor organs such as liver, left kidney and spleen. Our method was tested on a dataset of 12 portal-venous phase CT data. The average DSC of total organs was $90.47{\pm}1.70%$. Our method can be used for patient-specific abdominal organ segmentation for rehearsal of laparoscopic surgery.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.179-190
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• 2001

In this proposed study, observing and analyzing contrast enhanced abdominal CT images, we segmented the liver automatically. We computed the ratio of each gray value from the estimated gray value range. With the average value of mesh image, we distinguished the liver from the noise parts. We divided the region based on immersion simulation. The threshold value is determined from the mesh image which is generated from each gray value portion of the liver and is used in dividing the liver to the noise region. To get the outline of the liver, we generated template image which represents the lump of the liver, and subtracted it from the binary image. With the results we use the proposed algorithm using 8-connectivity instead of the present opening algorithm, to reduce the processing time. We computed the volume from the segmented organ size and presented a clinical demonstration with the animal experiment

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.8-14
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• 2001

In this paper, we suggests a algorithms of recognizing the disease region by extracting particular organ from medical image. This method can extract liver region in spite of input image including many organs and charged format by using multi-threshold of feed-back-structure for segmentation liver region, and suggest the recognition of disease region in extracted liver, using multi-neural network structured by RBF and BP, overcoming the defect of single-neural network. The algorithm in this paper is proficient in adaptation for a multi form change of input medical image. This algorithm can be used at tole-medicine through automatic recognition after recognizing of the disease region by real-tire medical Image.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.48-54
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• 2020

In this paper, we deal with a liver fibrosis classification problem using ultrasound B-mode images. Commonly representative methods for classifying the stages of liver fibrosis include liver biopsy and diagnosis based on ultrasound images. The overall liver shape and the smoothness and roughness of speckle pattern represented in ultrasound images are used for determining the fibrosis stages. Although the ultrasound image based classification is used frequently as an alternative or complementary method of the invasive biopsy, it also has the limitations that liver fibrosis stage decision depends on the image quality and the doctor's experience. With the rapid development of deep learning algorithms, several studies using deep learning methods have been carried out for automated liver fibrosis classification and showed superior performance of high accuracy. The performance of those deep learning methods depends closely on the amount of datasets. We propose an enhanced U-net architecture to maximize the classification accuracy with limited small amount of image datasets. U-net is well known as a neural network for fast and precise segmentation of medical images. We design it newly for the purpose of classifying liver fibrosis stages. In order to assess the performance of the proposed architecture, numerical experiments are conducted on a total of 118 ultrasound B-mode images acquired from 78 patients with liver fibrosis symptoms of F0~F4 stages. The experimental results support that the performance of the proposed architecture is much better compared to the transfer learning using the pre-trained model of VGGNet.

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

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.19B no.2
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• pp.123-126
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• 2012

This paper proposed a method to separate a liver into left and right liver lobes for simple and exact volumetry of the river graft at abdominal MDCT(Multi-Detector Computed Tomography) image before the living donor liver transplantation. A medical team can evaluate an accurate river graft with minimized interaction between the team and a system using this algorithm for ensuring donor's and recipient's safe. On the image of segmented liver, 2 points(PMHV: a point in Middle Hepatic Vein and PPV: a point at the beginning of right branch of Portal Vein) are selected to separate a liver into left and right liver lobes. Middle hepatic vein is automatically segmented using PMHV, and the cutting line is decided on the basis of segmented Middle Hepatic Vein. A liver is separated on connecting the cutting line and PPV. The volume and ratio of the river graft are estimated. The volume estimated using 2 points are compared with a manual volume that diagnostic radiologist processed and estimated and the weight measured during surgery to support proof of exact volume. The mean ${\pm}$ standard deviation of the differences between the actual weights and the estimated volumes was $162.38cm^3{\pm}124.39$ in the case of manual segmentation and $107.69cm^3{\pm}97.24$ in the case of 2 points method. The correlation coefficient between the actual weight and the manually estimated volume is 0.79, and the correlation coefficient between the actual weight and the volume estimated using 2 points is 0.87. After selection the 2 points, the time involved in separation a liver into left and right river lobe and volumetry of them is measured for confirmation that the algorithm can be used on real time during surgery. The mean ${\pm}$ standard deviation of the process time is $57.28sec{\pm}32.81$ per 1 data set ($149.17pages{\pm}55.92$).

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.189-194
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• 2004

Pixel values of contrast enhanced computed tomography (CE-CT) images are randomly changed. Also, the middle liver part has a problem to segregate the liver structure because of similar gray-level values of a pancreas in the abdomen. In this paper, an automatic liver segmentation method using a partial histogram threshold (PHT) algorithm is proposed for overcoming randomness of CE-CT images and removing the pancreas. After histogram transformation, adaptive multi-modal threshold is used to find the range of gray-level values of the liver structure. Also, the PHT algorithm is performed for removing the pancreas. Then, morphological filtering is processed for removing of unnecessary objects and smoothing of the boundary. Four CE-CT slices of eight patients were selected to evaluate the proposed method. As the average of normalized average area of the automatic segmented method II (ASM II) using the PHT and manual segmented method (MSM) are 0.1671 and 0.1711, these two method shows very small differences. Also, the average area error rate between the ASM II and MSM is 6.8339 ％. From the results of experiments, the proposed method has similar performance as the MSM by medical Doctor.