• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제51권3호
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• pp.867-876
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• 2019

Second harmonic generation using nonlinear ultrasonic waves have been shown to be an early indicator of possible fatigue damage in nuclear power plant components. This technique relies on measuring amplitudes, making it highly susceptible to variations in transducer coupling and instrumentation. This paper proposes an experimental procedure for in-situ surface wave nonlinear ultrasound measurements on specimen with permanently mounted transducers under high cycle fatigue loading without interrupting the experiment. It allows continuous monitoring and minimizes variation due to transducer coupling. Moreover, relations describing the effects of the measurement system nonlinearity including the effects of the material transfer function on the measured nonlinearity parameter are derived. An in-situ high cycle fatigue test was conducted using two 304 stainless steel specimens with two different excitation frequencies. A comprehensive analysis of the nonlinear sources, which result in variations in the measured nonlinearity parameters, was performed and the effects of the system nonlinearities are explained and identified. In both specimens, monotonic trend was observed in nonlinear parameter when the value of fundamental amplitude was not changing.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• 제14권5호
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• pp.268-272
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• 2013

The aim of this study was to develop an ultrasonic tooth-whitening apparatus using piezoelectric transducers, which enhance bleaching efficiency by applying ultrasound, while performing a teeth whitening procedure. For this purpose, an ultrasonic transducer was designed and manufactured, and the effects of reduction in the whitening material's concentration and in the whitening treatment time through using the ultrasound cavitation phenomenon were confirmed. Also, the validity of this study was investigated by comparing the whitening performance with a commercialized optical whitener, through color comparison. The results revealed that the ultrasound whitener produced color values that were enhanced by as much as double that of the conventional LED light whitening method. Even when the operational time was reduced by half, the ultrasound method showed superior performance by over 54% compared to the conventional light whitener, revealing that the ultrasound method showed a remarkable treatment reduction effect.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제22권8호
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• pp.622-628
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• 2003

최근 안과 또는 피부과의 의료진단분야에 도입하기 위한 수십 μm 이하의 높은 공간분해능을 갖는 수십 MHz 대역의 초음파 트랜스듀서에 대한 연구가 활발히 수행되고 있다. 본 해설에서는 그 연구의 배경 및 트랜스듀서의 구조와 특성, 그리고 그것을 이용하여 얻은 영상에 대하여 간략하게 소개하였다.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제39권4호
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• pp.153-160
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• 2018

3D ultrasound bladder scanners are getting popular in hospitals for the patients with bladder dysfunction. A current bladder scanner adopts a mechanical scan to acquire 3D images and requires two motors and complicated mechanical devices. In this paper, we propose a new ultrasound bladder scanner using hand-motion scan. Instead of two motors and mechanical devices, it has a motion sensor to record transducer positions during hand-motion scan. The experiments with a bladder phantom and volunteers showed similar measurement accuracy to a conventional 3D ultrasound bladder scanner. We expect that the proposed method will reduce the cost and size of the bladder scanner.

• 한국소음진동공학회논문집
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• 제26권2호
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• pp.148-156
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• 2016

The paper deals with improvement of a piezoelectric ultrasonic transducer for measuring both pipe thickness and flow velocity. The transducer structure is based on the conventional transducers for measuring flow velocity by obliquely transmitting ultrasonic waves to the flow direction. The transducer invented earlier for measuring flow velocity and pipe thickness had an advantage of including only one piezoelectric disc, but for the thickness measurement the ultrasonic wave had to be reflected twice in a wedge material to be transmitted vertically to a pipe, and thus the wave signal was too weak. The transducer has been improved to transmit waves for thickness measurement vertically to a pipe without any prior reflection by electrically connecting two piezoelectric discs, one for flow velocity and the other for pipe thickness measurement. By comparing the measured results of specimen thickness with the improved transducer and conventional transducers, the accuracies of the improved one have been evaluated in the pipe thickness measurements.

• 비파괴검사학회지
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• 제25권6호
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• pp.446-450
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• 2005

We have built a spherically focused, not using acoustic mirrors, capacitive micromachined air-coupled ultrasonic transducer. A flexible backplate of a copper/polyimide backplate is used, permitting it to conform to a spherically shaped substrate. The backplate is patterned with $40-{\mu}m$ depressions having $80-{\mu}m$ center-to-center spacing. A $6-{\mu}m$ thick aluminized Mylar film completing the transducer is deformed to allow it to conform to the spherical backplate. The device's frequency spectrum is centered at 805kHz with -6dB points at 440 and 1210kHz.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• 제25권4E호
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• pp.159-165
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• 2006

Human, horse and rat bloods in a cylindrical chamber where flow was controlled by a stirring magnet were used for studying red blood cell aggregation. Ultrasound backscattered powers from blood were obtained from the backscattered signals measured by a 5 MHz focused transducer in a pulse-echo setup. The experimental results showed the differences in red blood cell (RBC) aggregation tendency among the three mammalian species with an order of horse > human > rat. The ultrasound backscattered power decreased with stirring speed in human and horse blood, but no variations were observed in rat blood. Sudden flow stoppage led to the slow increase of the backscattered power for human and horse blood. There was no self-aggregation tendency in rat blood. The enveloped echo images showed the spatial and temporal variations of RBC aggregations in the cylindrical chamber. These observations from the different mammalian species may give a better understanding of the mechanism of RBC aggregation.

• 센서학회지
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• 제31권5호
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• pp.286-292
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• 2022

As mobile electronics become smarter, higher-level security systems are necessary to protect private information and property from hackers. For this, biometric authentication systems have been widely studied, where the recognition of unique biological traits of an individual, such as the face, iris, fingerprint, and voice, is required to operate the device. Among them, ultrasound fingerprint imaging technology using piezoelectric materials is one of the most promising approaches adopted by Samsung Galaxy smartphones. In this review, we summarize the recent progress on piezoelectric ultrasound micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) transducers with various piezoelectric materials and provide insights to achieve the highest-level biometric authentication system for mobile electronics.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제39권6호
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• pp.576-584
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• 2020

폴리비닐알코올(polyvinyl alcohol, PVA)젤을 온도가시화용 생체모의매질로 사용하기 위한 기초적인 정보를 얻기 위하여, PVA의 농도를 바꾸어가며 집속초음파에 의한 온도변화 특성을 조사하였다. 기본적인 음향 특성을 조사하기 위하여 PVA농도에 따른 음속, 감쇠계수, 밀도 등이 측정되었고 열역학적 특성인 열전도도, 열용량이 측정되었다. 30 ℃ 이상에서 변색되는 시온필름을 사용하여 집속초음파에 의해 상승되는 초점부근의 온도 변화의 범위를 관찰하였으며 기록된 이미지의 화상처리를 통하여 변색범위의 면적을 도출하였다. PVA의 농도가 2 wt%~16 wt%의 범위에서 증가할수록 젤 내부에서 30 ℃ 이상으로 상승하는 영역은 선형적으로 증가함을 보였고 집속초음파 트랜스 듀서에 인가하는 파워가 증가할수록 변색영역이 증가함을 확인하였다. 이들 결과는 유한요소법을 사용한 시뮬레이션 결과와도 좋은 일치를 보였다.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제44권4호
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• pp.255-263
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• 2023

Clinical ultrasound (US) is a widely used imaging modality with various clinical applications. However, capturing a large field of view often requires specialized transducers which have limitations for specific clinical scenarios. Panoramic imaging offers an alternative approach by sequentially aligning image sections acquired from freehand sweeps using a standard transducer. To reconstruct a 3D volume from these 2D sections, an external device can be employed to track the transducer's motion accurately. However, the presence of optical or electrical interferences in a clinical setting often leads to incorrect measurements from such sensors. In this paper, we propose a deep learning (DL) framework that enables the prediction of scan trajectories using only US data, eliminating the need for an external tracking device. Our approach incorporates diverse data types, including correlation volume, optical flow, B-mode images, and rawer data (IQ data). We develop a DL network capable of effectively handling these data types and introduce an attention technique to emphasize crucial local areas for precise trajectory prediction. Through extensive experimentation, we demonstrate the superiority of our proposed method over other DL-based approaches in terms of long trajectory prediction performance. Our findings highlight the potential of employing DL techniques for trajectory estimation in clinical ultrasound, offering a promising alternative for panoramic imaging.