• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.27-32
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• 2015

Functional safety is part of the overall safety relating to the equipment under control (EUC) and the EUC control system that depends on the correct functioning of the electrical/electronic/programmable electronic (E/E/PE) safety-related systems. Since the complexity of the medical equipment is increased, manufactures have to obtain functional safety as well as basic safety. This study proposes a perspective for applying functional safety to medical equipment. The research is carried out with respect to overall safety life-cycle of functional safety and essential performance of the medical equipment. The relationship between functional safety and essential performance is identified centered on the safety function. The essential performance using E/E/PE systems is defined as a safety function of functional safety. This approach is applied to a ultrasound imaging system as a case study.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.6066-6071
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• 2013

This paper proposes a calibration method for a freehand 3-D ultrasound system in medical robotic research. The calibration block with six wires was designed to set the fixed target points. The positions of the ultrasound probe and calibration block were measured using an optical tracker. The relationship between the position of the ultrasound probe and the pixel coordinates in the images was derived using a calibration process. The scaling matrix was also calculated. The experimental results showed that the proposed method could find solutions using a simple least square method from one or multiple ultrasound images.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.250-257
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• 2007

Functional gastrointestinal disorders affect millions of people of all age regardless of race and sex. There are, however, rare diagnostic methods for the functional gastrointestinal disorders because functional disorders show no evidence of organic and physical causes. Our research group identified recently that the gastrointestinal tract well in the patients with the functional gastrointestinal disorders becomes more rigid than healthy people when palpating the abdominal regions overlaying the gastrointestinal tract. The aim is, therefore, to develop a diagnostic method for the functional gastrointestinal disorders based on quantitative measurement of the rigidity of the gastrointestinal tract well using ultrasound technique. For this purpose, a preliminary ultrasound diagnostic system was developed and verified through phantom tests. The system consisted of transmitter, ultrasonic transducer, receiver, TGC, and CPLD, and verified via a phantom test. For the phantom test, ten soft-tissue specimens were harvested from porcine. Five of them were then treated chemically to mimic a rigid condition of gastrointestinal tract well, which was induced by functional gastrointestinal disorders. Additionally, the specimens were tested mechanically to identify if the mimic was reasonable. The customized ultrasound system was finally verified through application to human subjects with/without functional gastrointestinal disorders(Normal and Patient Groups). It was identified from the mechanical test that the chemically treated specimens were more rigid than normalspecimen. This finding was favorably compared with the result obtained from the phantom test. The phantom test also showed that ultrasound system well described the specimen geometric characteristics and detected an alteration in the specimens. The maximum amplitude of the ultrasonic reflective signal in the rigid specimens $(0.2{\pm}0.1Vp-p)$ at the interface between the fat and muscle layers was explicitly higher than that in the normal specimens $(0.1{\pm}0.0Vp-p)$ (p<0.05). Clinical tests using our customized ultrasound system for human subject showed that the maximum amplitudes of the ultrasonic reflective signals nea. to the gastrointestinal tract well for the patient group$(2.6{\pm}0.3Vp-p)$ were generally higher than those in normal group$(0.1{\pm}0.2Vp-p)$ (p<0.05). These results suggest that newly designed diagnostic system based on ultrasound technique may diagnose enough the functional gastrointestinal disorders.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.55-59
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to quantitatively evaluate image quality using intensity profile, coefficient of variation (COV), and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) with respect to noise reduction techniques in the ultrasound images. For that purpose, we compared with the median filter, Rudin-Osher-Fatemi (ROF), Anscombe and proposed patch group prior based denoising (PGPD) techniques. To evaluate image quality, the Shepp-Logan phantom and the ultrasound image were acquired using simulation and experiment, respectively. According to the results, the difference of intensity profile using PGPD technique is lowest compared with original Shepp-Logan phantom. In simulation, the measured COV was 0.249, 0.198, 0.198, 0.177, and 0.080 using noisy, median, ROF, Anscombe and PGPD technique, respectively. Also, in experimental image, the measured COV was 0.245, 0.230, 0.231, 0.242 and 0.187 using noisy, median, ROF, Anscombe and PGPD technique, respectively. Especially, when we used PGPD technique, the PSNR has highest value in both simulation and experiment. In this study, we performed simulation and experiment study to compare various denoising techniques in the ultrasound image. We can expect the PGPD technique to improve in medical diagnosis with excellent noise reduction.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.622-628
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• 2003

Recently, ultrasound transducers in several tens MHz band, which can give the spatial resolution higher than several tens micrometers, have been intensively studying for applying to medical diagnostic fields of ophthalmology and dermatology. In this paper, the background of the studies, structures and characteristics of the transducers, and images obtained by the transducers are briefly reviewed.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.87-92
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• 1988

In this paper, a new focusing method, to be called the pipelined sampled delay focusing (PSDF), is implemented. This method improves the lateral resolution in ultrasound imaging system. In PSDF, the analog belay lines are no longer necessary because sampling sum process can replace the conventional delay sum process. Also, the method offers continuous dynamic focusing on the resolution pixel basis, and eliminates the constraint that the maximum delay time is less than the sampling interval. Second order sampling is adopted in order to extend the sampling interval.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2017

According to living environment, the number of deaths due to thyroid diseases increased. In this paper, we proposed an algorithm for recognizing a thyroid detection using texture analysis based on shape, gray level co-occurrence matrix and gray level run length matrix. First of all, we segmented the region of interest (ROI) using active contour model algorithm. Then, we applied a total of 18 features (5 first order descriptors, 10 Gray level co-occurrence matrix features(GLCM), 2 Gray level run length matrix features and shape feature) to each thyroid region of interest. The extracted features are used as statistical analysis. Our results show that first order statistics (Skewness, Entropy, Energy, Smoothness), GLCM (Correlation, Contrast, Energy, Entropy, Difference variance, Difference Entropy, Homogeneity, Maximum Probability, Sum average, Sum entropy), GLRLM features and shape feature helped to distinguish thyroid benign and malignant. This algorithm will be helpful to diagnose of thyroid nodule on ultrasound images.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.534-544
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• 2022

Medical ultrasound system has been widely used to visualize the lesion for diagnostics in most medical service site including hospitals and clinics thanks to its advantages such as real time operation, ease of use, safety. Among many signal processing blocks of the system, one of the most important part that governs the image quality is the beamformer, and technologies for this part has been continuously developed in long time. The synthetic aperture imaging method, that is one of the major technologies of beamforming, was introduced to maximize utilizing the information delivered from the patient's body through the probe, and contributed to breakthrough of the image quality since it was introduced in around 1990's, and evolved continuously in decades. This paper reviews and surveys the process of development of this technology and expects future evolution.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1985 no.06
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• pp.15-19
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• 1985

This study deals with a kind of signal processing, Kalman filtering techniques, which are applied to ultrasound signal to improve resolution capability. The main advantage of Kalman filter algorithm for the analysis of reflected ultrasound signal is its recursive structure which can be easily adapted to time-varing system. In state-space description of the system, the 6th order system produces the best spectral approximation to the source pulse. As a result of spectrum analysis, 6th order estimator for two closely spaced (0.5mm) reflectors enhance resolution by 4dB - 10dB. By using this result, the possibility to detect even minute tumor is found.

• Journal of Industrial Technology
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• v.25 no.A
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• pp.87-93
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• 2005

Three-dimensional ultrasonic probes being applied to the medical imaging can be grouped into three depending on the scanning methods, which are a mechanical type system, a free-hand system, and 2D phased arrays system. A mechanical type scanner uses a mechanically driven transducer to acquire series of 2D plane images. By integrating these images, a 3-D medical image can be constructed. A motor driving mechanism is a conventional choice for mechanically driving a transducer assembly which picks the raw ultrasonic images up. In this paper we attempt to design a 3D ultrasonic probe which has a operating mechanism of s tilting 3-D scanning. The motion of a transducer assembly of the ultrasonic probe is analytically modelled. We propose a selection procedure for the diameter of a wire rope driving the transducer assembly and the size of torsional spring which gives an initial tension to wire ropes.