• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.37 no.11
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• pp.866-870
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• 2010

This paper presents an improved Snake algorithm that contains additional energy term related to adjacent edges. The suggested algorithm represents the distance between an adjacent edge and the current cell as energy, and extracts object contours more effectively by including the energy tenn to the whole energy function. The adjacent edge-based snake algorithm not only make it possible to detect object boundaries which are concave, but also can detect the boundaries of complex objects without weight adjustment. Experimental results show that the proposed method extracts object boundaries more accurately than other existing methods without loss of speed.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.56-62
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• 2000

In this paper, an automatic extraction of the blood flow contour from cardiac MRI is proposed. By using the GVF snake which has wider capture range than the conventional snake, and by automatically generating the initial points along the outside of the contour of the zero GVF field in the edge image of the cardiac MRI, the blood flow contour can be automatically extracted, even when the contours have boundary concavities due to the papillary muscles, without any manual initialization of the experts. Experiments are conducted on the various real cardiac MRIs including noise and papillary muscles, and the proposed method is proved to be efficient in automatic extraction of the blood contours even if they have the boundary concavities.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.105-107
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• 1985

It is very difficult to check the severity and clinical course of the toxicity in snake bite patients by virtes of clinical manifestation and laboratory tests. And we observed the. findings of bone scan with 99mTc-MDP in two snake bite patients. First patient was bitten in the right ankle with local pain and swelling. The finding of bone scan of him was increased uptake of radionuclide in the soft tissue of right leg and thigh. Others were normal findings. Second patient was bitten in the right hand. But his symptom was severe and he complained local pain and swelling, nausea, blurred vision, and oliguria. The bone scan findings of second patient was; Increased uptake of radionuclide in the soft tissue of whole body. Decreased uptake in the bone tissue. Renal outline was not delineated. Follow up study 10 days after, revealed more improved findings in the scan.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2002.07d
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• pp.2715-2717
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• 2002

Image segmentation is an essential technique of image analysis. In spite of the issues in contour initialization and boundary concavities, active contour models(snakes) are popular and successful methods for the segmentation. In this paper, we present a new active contour model, GGF snake, for segmentation of endoscopic image. The GGF snake is less sensitive to contour initialization and ensures high accuracy, large capture range, and fast CPU time for computing external force. It was observed that the GGF snake produced more reasonable results in various image types, such as simple synthetic images, commercial digital camera images, and endoscopic images than previous snakes did.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.15B no.6
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• pp.501-506
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• 2008

The classical snake algorithm has a problem in detecting the boundary of an object with deep concavities. While the GVF method can successfully detect boundary concavities, it consumes a lot of time computing the energy map. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to reduce the computation time and improve performance in detecting the boundary of an object with high concavity. We define the degree of complexity of object boundary as the local curvature. If the value of the local curvature is greater than a threshold value, new snake points are added. Simulation results on several different test images show that our method performs well in detecting object boundary and requires less computation time.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.12B no.7 s.103
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• pp.767-774
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• 2005

In this paper, we present a snake-based scheme for tracking object contour using disparity information taken from a stereo image sequence with cluttered background. The proposed method is composed of two steps. First, 3-D motion of object is estimated and candidate snake points are selected in disparity space. Second, object contour is extracted by using a modified snake algorithm with disparity information. The proposed algorithm can successfully extract the concave contour of objects and track the object contour in complex image. Performance of the proposed algorithm has been verified by simulation.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.183-189
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• 2022

Background: Radio-telemetry is a useful method to investigate the spatial ecology of species in the wild, by tracking the signal of a transmitter attached to an individual. The method of attaching a transmitter to a snake is representatively divided into surgical implantation, and external attachment, which latter is often used in small snake species. Results: In this study, we evaluated and compared the utility of two external attachment methods, the nylon thread method and the tape method, applied to a small grassland snake species of approximately 50 cm snout-vent length, the Slender racer (Orientocoluber spinalis), on an island in the Republic of Korea. The nylon thread method and the tape method were applied to four and five individuals, and radio-tracked for an average of eight and eleven days, respectively. The nylon thread method caused individual injury and disturbed their movement, while using the tape method, the transmitter package sometimes dropped off, but no injury or movement problems occurred. Conclusions: Considering that poor understanding of how to attach the transmitter makes it difficult to investigate the spatial ecology of small snake species, the tape method, evaluated in this study, could be applied to attach a transmitter and to study spatial ecology of such snakes.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.291-298
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• 2021

In this study, we present a multi-sensor module for snake robot searching survivors in a narrow space. To this end, we integrated five sensor systems by considering the opinions of the first responders: a gas sensor to detect CO₂ gases from the exhalation of survivors, a CMOS camera to provide the image of survivors, an IR camera to see in the dark & smoky environment, two microphones to detect the voice of survivors, and an IMU to recognize the approximate location and direction of the robot and survivors. Furthermore, we integrated a speaker into the sensor module system to provide a communication channel between the first responders and survivors. To integrated all these mechatronics systems in a small, compact snake head, we optimized the positions of the sensors and designed a stacked structure for the whole system. We also developed a user-friendly GUI to show the information from the proposed sensor systems visually. Experimental results verified the searching function of the proposed sensor module system.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.105-114
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• 2011

The snake algorithm is widely adopted to track objects by extracting the active contour of the object from background. However, it fails to track the target converging to the background if there exists background whose gradient is greater than that of the pixels on the contour. Also, the contour may shrink when the target moves fast and the snake algorithm misses the boundary of the object in its searching window. To alleviate these problems, we propose an improved algorithm that can track object contour more robustly. Firstly, we propose two external energy functions, the edge energy and the contrast energy. One is designed to give more weight to the gradient on the boundary and the other to reflect the contrast difference between the object and background. Secondly, by computing the motion vector of the contour from the difference of the two consecutive frames, we can move the snake pointers of the previous frame near the region where the object boundary is probable at the current frame. Computer experiments show that the proposed method is more robust to the complicated background than the previously known methods and can track the object with fast movement.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.243-252
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• 2018

In this paper, we propose a bone region extraction method using a snake algorithm and a particle filter in CT image. We extract the bone outline using the snake algorithm, and extract the bone area by moving the particle filter along this outline. If other bones are in close proximity to the bone outline, the snake algorithm may not be able to extract the bone outline completely. At this time, the particle filter extracts the bone area while compensating for the error. In this paper, we compared the proposed method with the conventional morphological processing method. The result is similar when other bones are not close to the bone area to be extracted. However, if other bones are close to each other, The accuracy of the proposed method is higher than the conventional morphological processing method.