• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.569-579
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• 2019

Objective: To investigate the usefulness of computed tomography (CT) texture analysis (CTTA) in estimating histologic tumor grade and in predicting disease-free survival (DFS) after surgical resection in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Materials and Methods: Eighty-one patients with a single HCC who had undergone quadriphasic liver CT followed by surgical resection were enrolled. Texture analysis of tumors on preoperative CT images was performed using commercially available software. The mean, mean of positive pixels (MPP), entropy, kurtosis, skewness, and standard deviation (SD) of the pixel distribution histogram were derived with and without filtration. The texture features were then compared between groups classified according to histologic grade. Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazards analyses were performed to determine the relationship between texture features and DFS. Results: SD and MPP quantified from fine to coarse textures on arterial-phase CT images showed significant positive associations with the histologic grade of HCC (p < 0.05). Kaplan-Meier analysis identified most CT texture features across the different filters from fine to coarse texture scales as significant univariate markers of DFS. Cox proportional hazards analysis identified skewness on arterial-phase images (fine texture scale, spatial scaling factor [SSF] 2.0, p < 0.001; medium texture scale, SSF 3.0, p < 0.001), tumor size (p = 0.001), microscopic vascular invasion (p = 0.034), rim arterial enhancement (p = 0.024), and peritumoral parenchymal enhancement (p = 0.010) as independent predictors of DFS. Conclusion: CTTA was demonstrated to provide texture features significantly correlated with higher tumor grade as well as predictive markers of DFS after surgical resection of HCCs in addition to other valuable imaging and clinico-pathologic parameters.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.43 no.2 s.308
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• pp.40-47
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• 2006

This paper proposes a multitoning method using threshold modulation of MJBNM(Modified Jointly Blue Noise Mask) for banding artifacts reduction. As banding artifacts in multitoning appear as uniform dot distributions around the intermediate output levels, such multitone output results in discontinuity and visually unpleasing patterns in smooth transition regions. Therefore, to reduce these banding artifacts, the proposed method rearranges the dot distribution by introducing pixels in the neighborhood of output levels that occurs banding artifacts. First of all principal cause of banding artifacts are analyzed using mathematical description. Based on this analytical result, a threshold modulation technique of MJBNM which takes account of chrominance error and correlation between channels is applied. The original threshold range of MJBNM is first scaled linearly sot that the minimum and maximum of the scaled range include two pixel more than adjacent two output levels that cover an input value. In an input value is inside the vicinity of any intermediate output levels produce banding artifacts, the output is set to one of neighboring output levels based on the pointwise comparison result according to threshold modulation parameter that determines the dot density and distribution. In this case, adjacent pixels are introduced at the position where the scaled threshold values are located between two output levels and the minimum and maximum threshold values. Otherwise, a conventional multitoning method is applied. As a result, the proposed method effectively decreased the appearance of banding artifacts around the intermediate output levels. To evaluate the quality of the multitone result, HVS-WRMSE according to gray level for gray ramp image and S-CIELAB color difference for color ramp image are compared with other methods.

• Journal of Information Technology Application
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.133-147
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• 2001

This paper proposed a new algorithm for binarization and removal of noises in color images with characters and pictures. Binarization was performed by threshold which had computed with color-relationship relative to the number of pixel in background and character candidates and pre-threshold for dividing of background and character candidates in input images. The pre-threshold has been computed by the histogram of R, G, B In respect of the images, while background and character candidates of input images are divided by the above pre-threshold. As it is possible that threshold can be dynamically decided by the quantity of the noises, and the character images are maintained and the noises are removed to the maximum. And, in this study, we made the noise pattern table as a result of analysis in noise pattern included in the various color images aiming at removal of the noises from the Images. Noises included in the images can figure out Distribution by way of the noise pattern table and pattern matching itself. And then this Distribution classified difficulty of noises included in the images into the three categories. As removal of noises in the images is processed through different procedure according to the its classified difficulties, time required for process was reduced and efficiency of noise removal was improved. As a result of recognition experiments in respect of extracted characters in color images by way of the proposed algorithm, we conformed that the proposed algorithm is useful in a sense that it obtained the recognition rate in general documents without colors and pictures to the same level.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.44 no.4 s.316
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• pp.17-25
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• 2007

Multilevel inkjet printer employs multiple ink droplets with variable dot size and/or different concentrations intended to preserve high fidelity color reproduction and the appearance of continuous tone. A variety of research efforts on multitoning techniques has progressed toward better image quality. However, banding artifacts appear due to the same dot distributions near the printable output levels. This results in discontinuity and visually unpleasing output, especially at the smooth tone transition region. In this paper, to reduce the banding artifacts, a multitoning method to arrange ink distribution by controlling the blending proportion of adjacent output pixels based on an improved threshold scaling function is proposed. Ink distributions across the banding regions are changed according to two factors of the threshold scaling function because these factors handle the blending point of adjacent output pixel. Therefore, 8 observers, subjectively investigated ink distributions around the printable output levels for a set of the improved threshold scaling function. For a threshold scaling function with the specific factor values, we can achieve smoother visual transition. In the experiment, the proposed method showed a reduction of banding artifacts in both u-ay and color image and represented better Performance of color reproduction.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1201-1208
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• 2020

A mass of seawater with similar properties in the ocean is called a water mass, and the front is a sea area where two masses of different properties meet. The gradient algorithm is a method of extracting where the sea water temperature pixel changes rapidly assuming that the slope is large, and the place with the large slope is assumed to be a front. This method is able to process large amounts of satellite data at once. Therefore, in this study, we tried to find the front lines in the sea area around the Korean Peninsula by using a gradient algorithm. The study data used gridded sea surface temperature satellite data. The resolution was 1/4°, and the monthly average data from January 1993 to December 2018 were used. There were major five fronts representatively, China Coastal Front, South Sea Coastal Front, Kuroshio Front/ Kuroshio Extension Front, Subpolar Front and the Subarctic Front. As a result of comparing the distribution of front by season, more types of front were distributed in winter and spring than in summer and autumn, and the distribution range was wider.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.5-16
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• 2007

The monitoring and investigation of underwater landslide help to understand its mechanism, increase the usefuless of design and construction and reduce the losses. This paper presents three high resolution geophysical techniques electrical resisitance, ultrasonic wave reflection imaging, and shear wave tomography conducted to determine the lab-scaled submerged landslide. Electrical resistance profiles of a soil mass obtained by an electrical resistance probe provide detailed information to assess the spatial distribution of the soil mass with milimetric resolution. An ultrasonic wave image obtained by recording the reflections from interfaces of different impedance materials permits detecting layers and landslide with submilimetric resolution. The pixel based image of immersed landslides is created by the inversion of the boundary information achieved from the traveling time of shear waves. The experimental results show that the ultrasonic wave imaging and the electrical resistance can provide complementary information; and their association with S-wave tomography image can produce a 3-D view of the underwater landslide. This study suggests that geophysical techniques may be effective tools for the detection of the underwater landslides and spatial distribution offshore.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.985-991
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• 2023

A tissue-equivalent phantom is necessary for quality control of hyperthermia therapy. However, since there is no phantom for this purpose, phantoms made from agar are being used in various studies. The tissue-equivalent properties of the agar phantom were confirmed by comparison with the tissue-equivalent material bolus in this study. CT images of the agar phantom and bolus were acquired, and tissue equivalent characteristics were analyzed with image analysis and dose calculation using a computerized radiation therapy planning system. The average pixel value was 96.960±10.999 in bolus, 108.559±8.233 in 3% agar phantom, and 111.844±8.651 in 4% agar phantom. Using the SSD technique, 100 cGy was prescribed at a depth of 1.5 cm and 6 MV X -ray was set to irradiated to 10x10 cm2, and the absorbed dose according to depth was calculated from the central axis of the beam. The intraclass correlation coefficient of dose distribution of bolus, 3% agar phantom, and 4% agar phantom was 0.979 (p<.001, 95%CI .957-.991). The density (g/cm3) at the point where the absorbed dose was calculated was 0.990±0.020 at the bolus, 1.018±0.020 at the 3% agar phantom, and 1.035±0.024 at the 4% agar phantom. In this study, the internal density distribution and uniformity of the agar phantom were confirmed to be appropriate as a tissue equivalent material by analysis of CT images and a computerized radiation therapy planning system.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.166-176
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• 2002

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of visual activation and quantitative analysis of regional cerebral blood flow. Visual activation was known to increase regional cerebral blood flow in the visual cortex in occipital lobe. We evaluated that change in the distribution of $^{99m}Tc-HMPAO$ (Hexamethyl propylene amine oxime) to reflect in regional cerebral blood flow. Materials and Methods: The six volunteers were injected with 925 MBq (mean ages: 26.75 years, n=6, 3men, 3women) underwent MRI and $^{99m}Tc-HMPAO$ SPECT during a rest state with closed eyes and visual stimulated with 8 Hz LED. We delineate the legion of interest and calculated the mean count per voxel in each of the fifteen slices to quantitative analysis. The ROI to whole brain ratio and regional index was calculated pixel to pixel subtraction visual non-activation image from visual activation image and constructed brain map using a statistical parameter map (SPM99). Results: The mean regional cerebral blood flow was increased due to visual stimulation. The increase rate of the mean regional cerebral blood flow which of the activation region in primary visual cortex of occipital lobe was $32.50{\pm}5.67%$. The significant activation sites using a statistical parameter of brain constructed a rendering image and image fusion with SPECT and MRI. Conclusion: Visual activation was revealed significant increase through quantitative analysis in visual cortex. Activation region was certified in Talairach coordinate and primary visual cortex (Ba17),visual association area (Ba18,19) of Brodmann.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.445-456
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• 2005

The land surface parameters should be determined with sufficient accuracy, because these play an important role in climate change near the ground. As the surface reflectance presents strong anisotropy, off-nadir viewing results a strong dependency of observations on the Sun - target - sensor geometry. They contribute to the random noise which is produced by surface angular effects. The principal objective of the study is to provide a database of accurate surface reflectance eliminated the angular effects from MODIS 250m reflective channel data over Korea. The MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) sensor has provided visible and near infrared channel reflectance at 250m resolution on a daily basis. The successive analytic processing steps were firstly performed on a per-pixel basis to remove cloudy pixels. And for the geometric distortion, the correction process were performed by the nearest neighbor resampling using 2nd-order polynomial obtained from the geolocation information of MODIS Data set. In order to correct the surface anisotropy effects, this paper attempted the semiempirical kernel-driven Bi- directional Reflectance Distribution Function(BRDF) model. The algorithm yields an inversion of the kernel-driven model to the angular components, such as viewing zenith angle, solar zenith angle, viewing azimuth angle, solar azimuth angle from reflectance observed by satellite. First we consider sets of the model observations comprised with a 31-day period to perform the BRDF model. In the next step, Nadir view reflectance normalization is carried out through the modification of the angular components, separated by BRDF model for each spectral band and each pixel. Modeled reflectance values show a good agreement with measured reflectance values and their RMSE(Root Mean Square Error) was totally about 0.01(maximum=0.03). Finally, we provide a normalized surface reflectance database consisted of 36 images for 2001 over Korea.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.41-47
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• 1995

Tc-99m-MIBI(Sestamibi) myocardial SPECT along with T1-201 tomographic imaging has demonstrated wide application and high image qualify sufficient for the diagnosis of myocardial perfusion defect, which consequently reflects regional myocardial blood flow, The qualitative values of myocardial SPECT with Tc-99m-MIBI as well as the quantitative cases depend in some degree on the reconstruction techniques of multiple projections. Filtered backprojection(FBP) is the common standard for reconstruction rather than the complicated and time-consuming arithmetic methods. In FBP it Is known that the distribution of radioactivity in reconstructed transverse slices varies with the selected filter parameters such as cutoff frequencies and order(Butterworth case). The cutoff frequencies basically remove and decrease the true radioactive distribution and alter the pixel counts, which lead to underestimation of true counts in specific myocardial regions. In this study, we have investigated the effect of cutoff frequencies of reconstruction filter on the artifactually induced perfusion defects, which are often demonstrated near inferior and/or inferoseptal cardiac walls due to the intense hepatic uptake of Tc-99m-MIBI. A computerized method for identifying the relative degree of artifactual perfusion defect and for comparing those degrees along with the relative amount of hepatic uptake to myocardium was developed and patient images were studied to observe the quantitative degree of underestimation of myocardial perfusion, and to propose some reasonable thresh-old of cutoff frequency in the diagnosis of perfusion defect quantitatively. We concluded that from the quantitative viewpoint cutoff frequencies may be used as high as possible with the sacrifice of homogeneity of image quality, and those frequencies lower than the common 0.3 Nyquist frequency would reveal severe degradation of radio-active distribution near inferior and/or Inferoseptal myocardium when applying Butterworth or low pass filter.