• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• 제65권2호
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• pp.365-376
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• 2023

Pig breeding management directly contributes to the profitability of pig farms, and pregnancy diagnosis is an important factor in breeding management. Therefore, the need to diagnose pregnancy in sows is emphasized, and various studies have been conducted in this area. We propose a computer-aided diagnosis system to assist livestock farmers to diagnose sow pregnancy through ultrasound. Methods for diagnosing pregnancy in sows through ultrasound include the Doppler method, which measures the heart rate and pulse status, and the echo method, which diagnoses by amplitude depth technique. We propose a method that uses deep learning algorithms on ultrasonography, which is part of the echo method. As deep learning-based classification algorithms, Inception-v4, Xception, and EfficientNetV2 were used and compared to find the optimal algorithm for pregnancy diagnosis in sows. Gaussian and speckle noises were added to the ultrasound images according to the characteristics of the ultrasonography, which is easily affected by noise from the surrounding environments. Both the original and noise added ultrasound images of sows were tested together to determine the suitability of the proposed method on farms. The pregnancy diagnosis performance on the original ultrasound images achieved 0.99 in accuracy in the highest case and on the ultrasound images with noises, the performance achieved 0.98 in accuracy. The diagnosis performance achieved 0.96 in accuracy even when the intensity of noise was strong, proving its robustness against noise.

• 융합신호처리학회논문지
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.64-69
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• 2014

초음파(Ultrasound) 시스템은 진단의학분야, 수중통신, 센서네트워크 등 현대산업분야에 광범위하게 사용되는 복잡한 무선 신호처리 시스템 중 하나이다. 최근에는 초음파 시스템의 소형화가 본격화 되고 있다. 본 논문에서는 소형화되고, 모바일화 되는 진단 초음파시스템에 적합한 혼성 저잡음증폭기(Low Noise Amplifier, LNA)를 개발 하였다. 제안된 LNA는 5dB이하의 낮은 잡음특성을 가지고, 다양한 초음파 변환기(Transducer)의 임피던스매칭을 위해 피드백 저항값들을 전기적으로 조정할 수 있도록 설계하였다. 주파수는 10kHz에서 150MHz까지 초음파주파수 전 대역을 지원할 수 있고, 슬립모드를 지원한다. 시스템의 특성에 맞춰 각각의 변환기를 통해 -17.8dB-29.5dB의 이득을 갖는다. 기존의 LNA와 비교해서 비슷한 성능에 소모전력은 최대 90%를 줄일 수 있었다.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제5권1호
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• pp.85-92
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• 1984

A new architecture of the Digital Scan Converter (DSC) for the linear-scan ultrasound medical imaging systems is proposed and its hardware implementation is reported. While the conventional DSC merely displays the acquisited data and does nor allow access to the frame memory, it is possible, in the new system, to access to the frame memory for further imaging processing so as to obtain useful information for medical diagnosis. Image processing can be performed either by a special pupose processor, or by VAX 11/780. The system is made to operate asyncronously to increase the frame rate with tags assigned to the data. The proposed DSC was designed to be used without much modification for the sector scan system as well.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제42권3호
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• pp.203-213
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• 2023

의료용 초음파 영상 시스템에서, 영상점의 밖에서 오는 신호가 초음파 수신 집속 과정에서 완전히 제거되지 않으면 부엽을 발생시킨다. 부엽의 시간 신호가 영상점에서 오는 시간 신호(주엽)와 같이 중첩되어 나타나면 시간 영역에서 필터 처리를 이용하여 완전히 제거하기 어렵다. 그러나 수신 집속 과정에서 시간 -채널 신호를 푸리에 변환하면, 주엽과 부엽의 신호는 주파수 스펙트럼 영역에서 공간적으로 분리가 된다. 따라서 스펙트럼 영역에서 계산한 주엽과 부엽의 신호크기를 이용하여 크기 가중치를 계산하여 영상에 곱함으로써 부엽을 억제하였다. 그리고 주엽과 부엽의 스펙트럼이 인접할 때, 주엽과 부엽 스펙트럼 사이의 거리에 따라 거리 가중치를 적용하였다. 64 채널 선형 트랜스듀서를 사용하는 5 MHz의 초음파 영상 시스템에서 점확산 영상과 다른 밝기의 낭종을 가지는 스페클 영상을 합성하고 가중치를 적용하여 초음파 영상을 계산하였다. 점반사체 영상에서 해상도의 변화 없이 부엽이 크게 줄어들었으며 낭종 영상에서 대조도가 크게 개선됨을 컴퓨터 시뮬레이션으로 확인하였다.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제30권3호
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• pp.233-240
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• 2009

Using a spatial compound imaging technique in a medical ultrasound imaging system, the average speed of sound in a medium of interest is measured, and imaging of its distribution is implemented. When the brightness reaches the highest level in an ultrasonic image obtained as the speed of sound used in focusing is varied, it turns out that the focusing has been accomplished satisfactorily and that the speed of sound which has been adopted becomes the sought-after average speed of sound. Because spatial compound imaging provides many different views of the same object, the adverse effect of erroneous speed-of-sound estimation tends to be more severe in compound imaging than in plain B-mode imaging. Thus, in compound imaging, the average speed of sound even in the case of speckled images can be accurately estimated by observing the brightness change due to different speeds of sound employed. Using this new method that offers spatial diversity, we can construct an image of the speed of sound distribution in a phantom embedded with a 10-mm diameter plastic cylinder whose speed of sound is different from that of the background. The speed of sound in the cylinder is found to be different from that of the surrounding medium.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제29권1호
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• pp.40-45
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• 2008

Therapeutic ultrasound which is developed for rehabilitation therapy have already been used for healing joint contracture, synechia, acute and chronic inflammatory diseases. Medical devices for pain-relief and healing using therapeutic ultrasound are actively being developed. This study measured the change of PTT with the transmitted ultrasound through the human body to find out the increase of compliance of blood vessels. Measurement method of PTT in this study is employed as useful ways to acquire physiological information of patients in the clinical case in order to measure the change of mechanical characteristics of blood vessels. This study confirmed the PTT change of rehabilitation patients through the thermal effects of ultrasound by using PTT and also found that it is possible to increase PTT by adjusting the warm water and ultrasound. The increase of PTT means the decrease of the pulse wave velocity from the cardiovascular system to the peripheral arteries. The physiological effects occurred using the warm water and ultrasound.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제22권1호
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• pp.101-108
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• 2001

본 논문에서는 뇨실금 환자들에 대한 지원 기술의 일환으로 인체에 무해하고 비침습적인 초음파를 이용하여 배뇨시기를 알려주기 위한 재택용 뇨의 경보기용 뇨량검출 센서의 개발과 이를 이용한 방광 벽간거리와 뇨량과의 상관관계에 관하여 연구하였다. 개발된 센서는 인체내에 침투력이 가장 좋은 중심 주파수가 2.25 MHz인 초음파를 사용하여 분해능을 높여 오차를 감소시킬 수 있는 구조로 설계하였다. 이 센서를 이용하여 방광전.후벽간의 거리를 검출하여 이로부터 뇨량을 정량적으로 측정하기 위한 기초 실험을 실시하였다. 기초실험은 건강한 성인 남자 3명을 대상으로 초음파 뇨량검출 센서를 이용한 초음파 RF 반사신호 획득장치와 초음파 진단기에 의한 2가지 방법으로 이루어졌고 그 결과 뇨량과 벽간거리와의 사이에는 높은 상관성이 있음을 확인할 수 있었다. 결론적으로, 실험 결과를 토대로 하여 제작된 초음파 뇨의 센서를 부착한 초음파 뇨의 경보 시스템은 뇨실금 환자로 하여금 배뇨시기를 알려주는 경보 시스템으로 보건.복지적인 측면에서 현대사회에 기여할 공헌도가 매우 클 것이라 생각된다.

• 정보학연구
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.43-50
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• 2005

Quantitative analysis for distribution of penetrating ultrasound in vivo is very important to determine the treatment region and method. In this paper, we constructed a simplified 2-D femoral region model that consists of skin-fat-muscle-bone layered system, and simulated the pressure distribution in the model in case of applying ultrasound using Finite Element Method(FEM). The ultrasound used in the simulation was assumed to be pulse wave and the pressure distribution was analyzed during only one period of pulse wave. In order to find the penetration depth, amplitude of pressure and sphere that ultrasound reaches in the model, we performed the simulation with varying the applied frequency, transducer size and amplitude of transducer's output. The result showed that applied frequency is inversely proportional to the penetration depth and amplitude of pressure but the amplitude of transducer's output is proportional to the amplitude of pressure in the model. Also, the sphere that ultrasound reaches was widened and the amplitude of pressure became larger as the transducer size became larger. This results were similar to that obtained from the previous model consisting of fat-muscle-bone layered system, but we observed that the pressure of ultrasound is decreased due to the decrements of pressure by the absorption coefficient of skin and the interference that depends on the reflection of ultrasound caused by the difference of acoustic impedance of skin and fat. Finally, we can infer that the model proposed in this study is closer to the realistic model than the previous ones. It shows that the results obtained from this study can be useful in designing the ultrasound treatment instrument or in setting up the treatment plan.

• 전기학회논문지
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• 제66권8호
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• pp.1272-1277
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• 2017

To assist radiologists for the characterization of breast masses, Computer-aided Diagnosis(CADx) system has been studied. The CADx system can improve the diagnostic accuracy of radiologists by providing objective information about breast masses. Morphological and texture features were extracted from the breast ultrasound images. Based on extracted features, the CADx system retrieves masses that are similar to a query mass from a reference library using a k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) approach. Eight similarity measures of distance, Euclidean, Chebyshev(Minkowski family), Canberra, Lorentzian($F_2$ family), Wave Hedges, Motyka(Intersection family), and Cosine, Dice(Inner Product family) are evaluated by ROC(Receiver Operating Characteristic) analysis. The Inner Product family measure used with the k-NN classifier provided slightly higher performance for classification of malignant and benign masses than those with the Minkowski, $F_2$, and Intersection family measures.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제27권3호
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• pp.117-124
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• 2006

Recently, active research has been going on to measure the elastic modulus of human soft tissue with medical ultrasound imaging systems for the purpose of diagnosing cancers or tumors which have been difficult to detect with conventional B-mode imaging techniques. In this paper, a real-time ultrasonic elasticity imaging system is implemented in software on a Pentium processor-based ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system. Soft tissue is subjected to external vibration, and the resulting tissue displacements change the phase of received echoes, which is in turn used to estimate tissue elasticity. It was confirmed from experiment with a phantom that the implemented elasticity imaging system could differentiate between soft and hard regions, where the latter is twice harder than the former, while operating at an adequate frame rate of 20 frames/s.