• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.26 no.2
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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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.91-97
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• 2015

PURPOSE: In this study investigated the thermal effect in tissue mimicking phantom by the material of the ultrasonic transducer in low intensity sonication. METHODS: The material of the ultrasonic transducer was made of ceramic, stainless steel, aluminum. Korea Testing Laboratory was measured of the three kinds of materials the total output of the ultrasonic transducer. Each material was measured core temperature and the actual output depending on the type of transducer. Agarose tissue mimicking phantom and silicone tissue mimicking phantom was made. Transducers made of three kinds of materials were emitted in the phantom. It is shown as a graph about time and temperature and the surface temperature rising speed and deep temperature rise rate was investigated. RESULTS: Ceramic transducers were highest output. Higher than the stainless steel transducer, aluminum had the lowest total output. Deep temperature was the highest in the ceramic transducer, and the surface temperature was the highest in the stainless steel transducer. Thermal images of ceramic transducer showed that a valid output is formed deeper wider than the metal. CONCLUSION: Ceramic transducer is confirmed the excellence than the metal transducer in deep thermal effect and the actual output of the ultrasound.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.44 no.4
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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.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.112-119
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• 2015

Photoacoustic microscopy is capable of providing high-resolution molecular images, and its spatial resolution is typically determined by ultrasonic transducers used to receive the photoacoustic signals. Therefore, ultrasonic transducers for photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) should have a high operating frequency, broad bandwidth, and high signal-reception efficiency. Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) is a suitable material. To take full advantage of this material, the selection of the backing material is crucial, as it influences the center frequency and bandwidth of the transducer. Therefore, we experimentally determined the most suitable backing material among EPO-TEK 301, E-Solder 3022, and RTV. For this, three PVDF high-frequency single-element transducers were fabricated with each backing material. The center frequency and -6 dB bandwidth of each transducer were ascertained by a pulse-echo test. The spatial resolution of each transducer was examined using wire-target images. The experimental results indicated that EPO-TEK 301 is the most suitable backing material for a PAM transducer. This material provides the highest signal magnitude and a reasonable bandwidth because a large portion of the energy propagates toward the front medium, and the PVDF resonates in the half-wave mode.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.158-165
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• 2017

The physical shape of an ultrasound transducer has not been considered in previous studies of the photoacoustic saturation effect, where a photoacoustic signal's magnitude linearly increases as an absorption coefficient increases and it is finally saturated. In this paper, the effect of a spherically focused ultrasound transducer on photoacoustic nonlinearity is investigated. The focused ultrasound transducer's spatial filtering effect on photoacoustic signals is analytically derived considering the combined concept of a virtual point detector and Green function approach. The ultrasound transducer's temporal response (i.e., transfer function) effect on photoacoustic signals is considered by integrating photoacoustic signal values within the absorption area covered by a spatial resolution of the ultrasound transducer. Results from the analytically derived expression show that the magnitude of photoacoustic signals measured by a spherical focused ultrasound transducer shows a maximum at a specific absorption coefficient, and decreases after that maximum point as an absorption coefficient is increased. The origin of this photoacoustic nonlinearity is physically understood by comparing the ultrasound transducer's transfer functions and photoacoustic resonance spectra. In addition, this physical interpretation implies that the photoacoustic nonlinearity is strongly dependent on the irradiance distribution inside an absorption medium.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.39-45
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• 2013

Many researchers have studied the effectiveness of ultrasound in chemical and environmental engineering fields including material synthesis, pollutant removal, cleaning, extraction, and disinfection. Acoustic cavitation induced by ultrasound irradiation in aqueous phase can cause various sonophysical and sonochemical reactions without any chemicals. However most of the previous studies focused only on the relationships between ultrasonic conditions and the results of sonochemical reactions in lab-scale sonoreactors. As a results of this, only a few studies have been devoted to design and optimization of industrial scale sonoreactors. In this study, the effect of the distance between two opposite transducer modules on sonochemical reactions was investigated in single and dual irradiation systems (334 kHz) for four distances including 50, 100, 150, and 200 mm using KI dosimetry. It was found that the dual irradiation systems provided higher performance in terms of the zeroth reaction coefficient and the cavitation yield compared to the single irradiation systems. The sonochemiluminescence (SCL) images for the visualization of the cavitation field showed that cavitation active zone was larger and sonochemical reaction intensity was much higher in the dual irradiation system than in the single irradiation system.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.140-148
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• 2002

Anisotropic elastic constants of Zr-2.5Nb pressure tube materials were determined by a high temperature resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (RUS). The resonant frequencies were measured using alumina wave-guides and wide band ultrasonic transducers in a small furnace. The rectangular parallelepiped specimens were fabricated along with the axial, radial and circumferential direction of the pressure tube. A nine elastic stiffness tensor for orthotropic symmetry was determined in the range of room temperature ${\sim}500^{\circ}C$. As the temperature increases, the elastic constant tensor, cij gradually decreases. Higher elastic constants along the transverse direction compared to those along the axial or radial direction are similar to the case of Young's modulus or shear modulus. A crossing of shear elastic constants along axial direction and radial direction was observed near $150^{\circ}C$. This fact corresponds to the crossing of c44 and c66 of single crystal zirconium.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.235-241
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• 2009

Composite wood materials are very sensitive to water and inspection without any coupling medium of a liquid is really needed to wood materials due to the permeation of coupling medium such as water. However, air-coupled ultrasound has obvious advantages over water-coupled experimentation compared with conventional C-scanner. In this work, it is desirable to perform contact-less nondestructive evaluation to assess wood material homogeneity. A wood material was nondestructively characterized with non-contact and contact modes to measure ultrasonic velocity using automated data acquisition software. We have utilized a proposed peak-delay measurement method. Also through transmission mode was performed because of the main limitation for air-coupled transducers, which is the acoustic impedance mismatch between most materials and air. The variation of ultrasonic velocity was found to be somewhat difference due to air-coupled limitations over conventional scan images. However, conventional C-scan images are well agreed with increasing the resin-infiltrated time as expected. Finally, we have developed a measurement system of an ultrasonic velocity based on data acquisition software for obtaining ultrasonic quantitative data for correlation with C-scan images.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.2E
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• pp.73-86
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• 1995

The transducer section of the forward-looking ultrasound imaging catheter (FLUIC) consists of a circular piezoelectric element as a vibrator and a conical acoustic mirror as a perfect reflector. A small diameter piezoelectric transducer element is mounted on the side of a catheter's rotating shaft. The unique design of FLUIC provides the capability to form a two-dimensional image of a cross-section of vessel in front of the catheter, which is lacking in the present generation of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) transducers, as well as a conventional side view image. The mirror configuration for the transducer section of the FLUIC is designed using an approximated ray tracing techniques. The diffraction transfer function approach [1] developed for the field prediction from primary sources is generalized and extended to predict the secondary diffraction characterstics from an acoustic mirror. The extended model is verified by simulation and experiment through a simple plane reflector and employed to analyzed the field characteristics of a FLUIC.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.538-544
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• 2000

A phased array ultrasonic nondestructive inspection system is being developed to obtain images of the interior of steel structures by modifying a medical ultrasound imaging system. The medical system consists of 64 individual transceiver channels that can drive 128 array elements. Several modifications of the system were required mainly due to the change of sound speed. It was necessary to fabricate array transducers for steel structure and to obtain A-scan signal that is necessary for the nondestructive testing. Boundary diffraction wave model was used for the prediction of radiation beam field from array transducers, which provided guidelines to design array transducers. And a RF data acquisition board was fabricated for the A-scan signal acquisition along a selected un line within an image. For the proper beam forming in the transmission and reception for steel structure, delay time was controlled. To demonstrate the performance of the developed system and fabricated transducers, images of artificial specimens and A-scan signals for selected scan lines were obtained in a real time fashion.