• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.6-15
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• 2012

Purpose : The objective of this study was to develop background gradient correction method using excitation pulse profile compensation for accurate fat and $T_2{^*}$ quantification in the liver. Materials and Methods: In liver imaging using gradient echo, signal decay induced by linear background gradient is weighted by an excitation pulse profile and therefore hinders accurate quantification of $T_2{^*}$and fat. To correct this, a linear background gradient in the slice-selection direction was estimated from a $B_0$ field map and signal decays were corrected using the excitation pulse profile. Improved estimation of fat fraction and $T_2{^*}$ from the corrected data were demonstrated by phantom and in vivo experiments at 3 Tesla magnetic field. Results: After correction, in the phantom experiments, the estimated $T_2{^*}$ and fat fractions were changed close to that of a well-shimmed condition while, for in vivo experiments, the background gradients were estimated to be up to approximately 120 ${\mu}T/m$ with increased homogeneity in $T_2{^*}$ and fat fractions obtained. Conclusion: The background gradient correction method using excitation pulse profile can reduce the effect of macroscopic field inhomogeneity in signal decay and can be applied for simultaneous fat and iron quantification in 2D gradient echo liver imaging.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1998 no.11
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• pp.115-116
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• 1998

Pulse echo techniques have been used for the conventional medical ultrasound imaging systems. However, their resolution is limited in the transmitted signal power. To overcome this limit, pulse compression method used in the radar systems was proposed. This system transmits a continuous coded signal and then compresses the received signal into the short and high resolution pulse by using correlator. The reflectors can be detected by cross-correlation between the transmitted signal and the received signal with the depth information. In this paper, we will present a comparative study of the performances of the most common sequences(pseudo-chirp, m-sequences, modified Golay code). The best result for improving resolution is obtained with the modified Golay Code.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2010.10a
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• pp.318-319
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• 2010

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.29-36
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• 2010

Ultrasonic inspection of heavy walled cast austenitic stainless steel(CASS)welds is very difficult due to complex and coarse grained structure of CASS material. The large size of anisotropic grain strongly affects the propagation of ultrasound by severe attenuation, change in velocity, and scattering of ultrasonic energy. therefore, the signal patterns originated from flaws can be difficult to distinguish from scattered signals. To improve detection and sizing capability of ID connected defect for heavy walled CASS piping welds, the low frequency segmented TRL Pulse Echo and Phased Array probe has been developed. The experimental studies have been performed using CASS pipe mock-up block containing artificial reflectors(ID connected EDM notch). The automatic pulse echo and phase array technique is applied the detection and the length sizing of the ID connected artificial reflectors and the results for detection and sizing has been compared respectively. The goal of this study is to assess a newly developed ultrasonic probe to improve the detection ability and the sizing of the crack in coarse-grained CASS components.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.24 no.1 s.173
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• pp.52-61
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• 2000

The role of quantitative nondestructive evaluation of defects is becoming more important to assure the reliability and the safety of structure, which can eventually be used for residual life evaluation of structure on the basis of fracture mechanics approach. Although ultrasonic technique is one of the most widely used techniques for application of practical field test among the various nondestructive evaluation technique, there are still some problems to be solved in effective extraction and classification of ultrasonic signal from their noisy ultrasonic waveforms. Therefore, crack size determination through a neural network based on the back-propagation algorithm using back-scattered ultrasonic signals is established in this study. For this purpose, aluminum plate containing vertical or inclined surface breaking crack with different crack length was used to receive the back-scattered ultrasonic signals by pulse echo method. Some features extracted from these signals and sizes of cracks were used to train neural network and the neural network's output of the crack size are compared with the true answer.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.268-279
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• 2007

The reliability of cold-bonding repair technique of carbon-fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) laminates, often used as a temporary repair for the airplane maintenance, has been evaluated during cyclic loading and localized heating by nondestructive methods. Major concern was given to the evolution of damage after repair in the form of delaminations due to localized heating and cyclic loading combined. An area of interest both on the specimen repaired by cold-bonding and the specimen without repair where delaminations were induced by localized heating and cyclic loading was monitored by acoustic emission (AE) testing and further examined by pitch-catch low-frequency bond testing, and pulse-echo high-frequency ultrasonic testing. The results showed that the reliability of cold-bonding repair would be significantly reduced by the localized heating and cyclic loading combined rather than by the cyclic loading only. AE monitoring appeared to be an effective and reliable tool to monitor the integrity of temporarily repaired CFRP laminates in terms of the structural health monitoring (SHM) philosophy.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.73-79
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• 1995

Most of conventional ultrasonic transducers are constructed to generate either longitudinal or shear waves, but not both of them. We investigated the mechanism of dual mode transducers that generates both of the longitudinal and shear waves simultaneously with a single PZT element. A piezoelectric ceramic PZT has the hexagonal 6mm crystal symmetry, after poling. We studied the performance of a PZT element as a function of its rotation angle so that its efficiency is optimized to excite the two waves equally strongly. The results are verified by checking the impedance variation of the element with Finite Element Methods, and checking the wave form by pulse-echo test simulation. Validity of the theoretical calculation is verified through experiments.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.30-36
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• 1992

In order to measure the characteristics of Surface Acousitc Wave(SA W) with compositions of $LiNbO_3$ single crystal, $128^{\circ}$ Y cut wafer was fabricated from $LiNbO_3$ single crystals with the composition range of 47-50 $Li_2O$mol%. Delay lines were formed on the $128^{\circ}$ Y cut wafer using photolithography technique. Delay time was measured by pulse-echo overlap method. The compositional dependence of SAW characteristics, SAW velocity, electro-mechanical coupling coefficient$(K_s^2)$ and temperature coefficient of delay time(TCD), were investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.420-425
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• 1999

Time of flight diffraction(TOFD) method is used in nondestructive tests of piping and pressure vessels because of its advantages over a pulse echo technique: its speed, objectivity, repeatability and its insensitivity to specimen surface conditions and discontinuity orientation. But it is the one of weak points in TOFD method that it has the dead zone in sub-surface resolution induced by lateral waves. We solved the dead-zone problem near the sub-surface by using the deconvolution method and the developed ultrasonic testing system showed high performance.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.138-148
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• 2016

Measurement of elastic constants is crucial for engineering aspects of predicting the behavior of materials under load as well as structural health monitoring of material degradation. Ultrasonic velocity measurement for material properties has been broadly used as a nondestructive evaluation method for material characterization. In particular, pulse-echo method has been extensively utilized as it is not only simple but also effective when only one side of the inspected objects is accessible. However, the conventional technique in this approach measures longitudinal and shear waves individually to obtain their velocities. This produces a set of two data for each measurement. This paper proposes a simultaneous sensing system of longitudinal waves and shear waves for elastic constant measurement. The proposed system senses both these waves simultaneously as a single overlapped signal, which is then analyzed to calculate both the ultrasonic velocities for obtaining elastic constants. Therefore, this system requires just half the number of data to obtain elastic constants compared to the conventional individual measurement. The results of the proposed simultaneous measurement had smaller standard deviations than those in the individual measurement. These results validate that the proposed approach improves the efficiency and reliability of ultrasonic elastic constant measurement by reducing the complexity of the measurement system, its operating procedures, and the number of data.