• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.77-87
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• 2011

In this paper, we propose a disparity correction technique to reduce the inherent visual discomfort while watching stereoscopic videos. The visual discomfort must be solved for commercial 3D display systems to provide natural stereoscopic videos to human eyes. The proposed disparity correction technique consists of horizontal and vertical disparity corrections. The horizontal disparity correction is implemented by controlling the depth budget of stereoscopic video using the geometric relations of a stereoscopic camera system. In addition, the vertical disparity correction is implemented by using a feature-based stereo matching algorithm. Conventional vertical disparity corrections have been done by only using camera calibration parameters, which still cause systematic errors in vertical disparities. In this paper, we minimize the vertical disparity as small as possible by using a feature-based correction algorithm. Through the comparisons of conventional feature-based correction algorithms, we analyze the performance of the proposed technique.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.19-23
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• 2001

In addition to landfilling and incineration, waste minimization and recycling have become priorities in Taiwan's municipal waste management strategies over the past 10 years. Major recycling initiatives being implemented in Taiwan include producer responsibility, "pay-as-you-throw, " and mandatory sorting provisions. Currently, the producer responsibility regime established under the Waste Disposal Act and administered by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) requires that manufacturers or importers of listed items, including containers, batteries. cars, motorcycles ("scooters"), tires, oil, televisions, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, computers, and printers, pay recycling fees to government recycling funds. EPA then uses the recycling funds to subsidize collection and recycling. The 2001 recycling fund budget totals NT$57 billion (NT$35 = US$l). Under the producer responsibility regime, EPA-designated retailers ("sellers") must accept end-of-life items returned to them by the consumers. At the local level, Taipei City implements a pay-as-you-throw program, whereby citizens pay waste collection and treatment fees through the purchase of special trash bags approved by the Taipei City Government. However. recyclables that are separated by citizens are collected free-of-charge by the City. Taichung City and Kaohsiung City, on the other hand, enforce mandatory sorting schemes, whereby citizens face penalties if they don't separate recyclables from the trash before pick-up. These programs have resulted in a significant reduction in municipal waste. Per capita waste collected per day has dropped from 1.143 kg in 1997 to 0.978 kg in 2000. Targeting a 10% recycling rate for municipal waste in 2001. EPA plans to research and develop new recycling techniques, expand the scope of producer responsibilities, and strengthen existing municipal recyclable collection programs. To this end, among other initiatives, EPA has prepared a draft "Resource Recycling and Reuse Act" that would complement the existing producer responsibility programs by incorporating into the current recycling framework the concept of product life-cycle management.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.151-159
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• 2014

Computed tomography (CT) is one of the most widely used medical imaging modality. However, substantial x-ray dose exposed to the human subject during the CT scan is a great concern. Region-of-interest (ROI) CT is considered to be a possible solution for its potential to reduce the x-ray dose to the human subject. In most of ROI-CT scans, the ROI is set to a circular shape whose diameter is often considerably smaller than the full field-of-view (FOV). However, an arbitrarily shaped ROI is very desirable to reduce the x-ray dose more than the circularly shaped ROI can do. We propose a new method to make a non-circular convex-shaped ROI along with the image reconstruction method. To make a ROI with an arbitrary convex shape, dynamic collimations are necessary to minimize the x-ray dose at each angle of view. In addition to the dynamic collimation, we get the ROI projection data with slightly lower sampling rate in the view direction to further reduce the x-ray dose. We reconstruct images from the ROI projection data in the compressed sensing (CS) framework assisted by the exterior projection data acquired from the pilot scan to set the ROI. To validate the proposed method, we used the experimental micro-CT projection data after truncating them to simulate the dynamic collimation. The reconstructed ROI images showed little errors as compared to the images reconstructed from the full-FOV scan data as well as little artifacts inside the ROI. We expect the proposed method can significantly reduce the x-ray dose in CT scans if the dynamic collimation is realized in real CT machines.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.270-285
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• 2005

A joint design scheme is proposed to optimize the up/down scaler and the motion vector estimation module in the transcoder system. The proposed scheme first optimizes the resolution scaler for a fixed motion vector, and then a new motion vector is estimated for the fixed scaler. These two steps are iteratively repeated until they reach a local optimum solution. In the optimization of the scaler, we derive an adaptive version of a cubic convolution interpolator to enlarge or reduce digital images by arbitrary scaling factors. The adaptation is performed at each macroblock of an image. In order to estimate the optimal motion vector, a temporary motion vector is composed from the given motion vectors. Then the motion vector is refined over a narrow search range. It is well-known that this refinement scheme provides the comparable performance compared to the full search method. Simulation results show that a jointly optimized system based on the proposed algorithms outperforms the conventional systems. We can also see that the algorithms exhibit significant improvement in the minimization of information loss compared with other techniques.