• ETRI Journal
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.797-810
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• 2019

Image saliency detection is the basis of perceptual image processing, which is significant to subsequent image processing methods. Most saliency detection methods can detect only a single object with a high-contrast background, but they have no effect on the extraction of a salient object from images with complex low-contrast backgrounds. With the prior knowledge, this paper proposes a method for detecting salient objects by combining the boundary contrast map and the geodesics-like maps. This method can highlight the foreground uniformly and extract the salient objects efficiently in images with low-contrast backgrounds. The classical receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve, which compares the salient map with the ground truth map, does not reflect the human perception. An ROC curve with distance (distance receiver operating characteristic, DROC) is proposed in this paper, which takes the ROC curve closer to the human subjective perception. Experiments on three benchmark datasets and three low-contrast image datasets, with four evaluation methods including DROC, show that on comparing the eight state-of-the-art approaches, the proposed approach performs well.

• Korean Journal of Digital Imaging in Medicine
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.51-57
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• 2009

The purpose of this study would evaluate if having clinical effects on diffusion image with quantitative analysis through ADC values of brain's normal tissue and lesions before and after contrast injections using a 3.0T. From November in 2007 until December in 2008, a total of 32 patient was performed on 3.0T(Signa Excite, GE Medical System, USA) with the normal or lesions in the patient who requests diffusion weighted image with 8channel head coil. The pulse sequence was used with spin echo EPI(TR: 10000msec, TE: 72.2 msec, Matrix: 128*128, FOV: 240 mm, NEX: 1, diffusion direction: 3, b-value: 1000). Measurement results of ADC values on lesions, CSF, white matter, gray matter, lesions after contrast injection were measured less 75% than before contrast injection, infarction: 100%, CSF: 78%(high), white matter: 71.4%(low), gray matter: 50%(high, low). The results of paired t-test on the deference of ADC values which statically is significant in three(lesions, CSF, white matter)regions except for white matter(p<0.05). Quantitative analysis of lesions, CSF, white matter, gray matter have difference on all regions. ADC values were low in lesions and white matter, normal CSF after contrast injection commonly is high than before contrast injection, ADC values which white matter were high and low (50:50) after contrast injection. 3.0T diffusion weighted image clinically supposed that performing DWI examination after contrast injection was not desirable because of having effects on brain tissue.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.372-377
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• 2014

The purpose of the study is to investigate how uptake counts of $^{201}Tl$ of radioisotopes in the human body could change, when taking computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging right after injecting contrast media. $^{201}Tl$ radioisotope substances of iodine contrast medium, which is a computed tomography contrast medium, and paramagnetic contrast medium, which is an magnetic resonance imaging contrast medium, were used as study materials. First, $^{201}Tl$ was put into 4 cc of normal saline in test tube, and then a computed tomography contrast medium of Iopamidol$^{(R)}$ or Dotarem$^{(R)}$, was put into 2 cc of normal saline in test tube. An magnetic resonance imaging contrast medium of Primovist$^{(R)}$ or Gadovist$^{(R)}$ was also put into 2 cc of normal saline in test tube. Each contrast medium was distributed to make $^{201}Tl$ as 3 mCi, with a total of 4 cc. Gamma camera, low energy high resolution collimator, and pinhole collimator were used to obtain images. The uptake count of $^{201}Tl$ was measured with 1000 frames of images, and obtained after 10 times of repetition. This study revealed that the use of Gadovist$^{(R)}$, which is an magnetic resonance imaging contrast medium, showed the smallest number of uptake count, after measuring $^{201}Tl$ uptake count by low energy high resolution collimator. On the other hand, the use of Iopamidol$^{(R)}$, which is a computed tomography contrast medium, showed the biggest difference in uptake count, when measuring $^{99m}Tc$ uptake count by Pinhole collimator. When examining with gamma camera, using contrast medium and $^{201}Tl$, identifying the changes of uptake count is very important for improving the value of diagnosis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.269-272
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• 2005

The principal objective of enhancement methods is to process an image so that the result is more suitable than the original image for a specific application. Images taken in the night can be low-contrast images because of poor environments. In this paper, we compare the structure of ICECA(Image Contrast Enhancement technique using Clustering Algorithm) with the structures of HE(Histogram Equalization), BBHE(Brightness preserving Bi-Histogram Equalization), and Multi -Scale Retinex(MSR). We compared performances of image enhancement methods by applying these methods to a set of diverse images.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.64-69
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• 2021

In this paper, a method for improving the defect classification performance in low contrast, ununiformity and featureless steel plate surfaces has been studied based on deep convolution neural network and transfer-learning neural network. The steel plate surface images have low contrast, ununiformity, and featureless, so that the contrast between defect and defect-free regions are not discriminated. These characteristics make it difficult to extract the feature of the surface defect image. A classifier based on a deep convolution neural network is constructed to extract features automatically for effective classification of images with these characteristics. As results of the experiment, AlexNet-based transfer-learning classifier showed excellent classification performance of 99.43% with less than 160 seconds of training time. The proposed classification system showed excellent classification performance for low contrast, ununiformity, and featureless surface images.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.1120-1124
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• 2004

Recently, Plasma Display Panel(PDP) has been in the spotlight as one of the next generation flat-panel-display device. However, it has several drawbacks like the low contrast ratio and the low luminance. In this study, a new address waveform is suggested to improve the priming effect and contrast ratio at the address period in the Address Display period Separated(ADS) method. We modified waveform, instead of a conventional waveform, to an address period, for operating on the Plasma Display Panels, which used the conventional gas [He-Ne-Xe〕. When the ramp pulse is added to the address period at the sustain electrode, it is improved on the priming effect and contrast ratio.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.62-69
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• 2011

The effects of actively stimulating devices (ASD) on juvenile flatfish escape were studied to increase escape rates from the cod end by encouraging fish to approach the net wall. Two kinds of ASD were designed: a fluttering net panel, i.e., a free-end flag-like net panel, and a double conical rope array. Escape responses of juvenile bastard halibut were observed in a circulating water channel using two model cod ends, one made with diamond-shaped 43-mm-mesh-size polyethylene (PE) as a high-contrast cod end and the other with polyamid (PA) mono-ply as a low-contrast cod end. Retention rate was significantly lower with the double conical rope-array ASD in the PE cod end than with conventional PE cod ends only or the fluttering net-panel ASD inside the PE cod end. Mean retention rate with the low-contrast PA cod end was also significantly lower than that with the high-contrast PE conventional cod end. Therefore, active fluttering devices using a double conical rope array together with less visible low-contrast netting in the cod end could help to reduce the bycatch of juvenile flatfish by weakening their optomotor response and actively driving fish to the side net panel.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.4043-4064
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• 2021

Night-time image quality evaluation is an urgent requirement in visual inspection. The lighting environment of night-time results in low brightness, low contrast, loss of detailed information, and colour dissonance of image, which remains a daunting task of delicately evaluating the image quality at night. A new blind quality assessment metric is presented for realistic night-time scenario through a comprehensive consideration of contrast, texture, and colour in this article. To be specific, image blocks' color-gray-difference (CGD) histogram that represents contrast features is computed at first. Next, texture features that are measured by the mean subtracted contrast normalized (MSCN)-weighted local binary pattern (LBP) histogram are calculated. Then statistical features in Lαβ colour space are detected. Finally, the quality prediction model is conducted by the support vector regression (SVR) based on extracted contrast, texture, and colour features. Experiments conducted on NNID, CCRIQ, LIVE-CH, and CID2013 databases indicate that the proposed metric is superior to the compared BIQA metrics.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.157-163
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• 2007

Purpose: To evaluate the characteristics of (widely used) cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) images. Materials and Methods: Images were obtained with CT performance phantoms (The American Association of Physicists in Medicine; AAPM). CT phantom as the destination by using PSR $9000N^{TM}$ dental CT system (Asahi Roentgen Ind. Co., Ltd., Japan) and i-CAT CBCT (Imaging Science International Inc., USA) that have different kinds of detectors and field of view, and compared these images with the CT number for linear attenuation, contrast resolution, and spatial resolution. Results: CT number of both PSR $9000N^{TM}$ dental CT system and i-CAT CBCT did not conform to the base value of CT performance phantom. The contrast of i-CAT CBCT is higher than that of PSR $9000N^{TM}$ dental CT system. Both contrasts were increased according to thickness of cross section. Spatial resolution and shapes of reappearance was possible up to 0.6 mm in PSR $9000N^{TM}$ dental CT system and up to 1.0 mm in i-CAT CBCT. Low contrast resolution in region of low contrast sensitivity revealed low level at PSR $9000N^{TM}$ dental CT system and i-CAT CBCT. Conclusion: CBCT images revealed higher spatial resolution, however, contrast resolution in region of low contrast sensitivity was the inferiority of image characteristics.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.310-315
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• 2004

Image taken in the night can be low-contrast images because of poor environment and image transmission. We propose an algorithm that improves the acquired low-contrast image. MPEG-2 separates chrominance and illuminance, and compresses respectively because human vision is more sensitive to luminance. We extracted illumination and used K-means algorithm to find a proper crossover point automatically. We used K-means algorithm in the viewpoint that the problem of crossover point selection can be considered as the two-category classification problem. We divided an image into two subimages using the crossover point, and applied the histogram equalization method respectively. We used the index of fuzziness to evaluate the degree of improvement. We compare the results of the proposed method with those of other methods.