• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.133-138
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• 1986

Abstract In a conventional digital sector scan system in the ultrasound medical imaging, the sampling space is in the polar coordinates while the display space is in the cartesian coordinates, which necessitates a coordinate transformation process resultion process resulting the overall system very complex and bulky. In this paper we propose a new architecture of the Digital-Scan-Converter (DSC) for the ultrasound sector scan system in which sampling space is the same as the display space, so the data are displayed as they are acquired without any interpola- tion process required. To implement the above real time DSC. two frequency synthesizes with very high switching time and a low-pass filter are required. The former determines the precise location of the data points and the latter fills the gap betw- een pixels in the horizontal direction.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.85-92
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• 1984

A new architecture of the Digital Scan Converter (DSC) for the linear-scan ultrasound medical imaging systems is proposed and its hardware implementation is reported. While the conventional DSC merely displays the acquisited data and does nor allow access to the frame memory, it is possible, in the new system, to access to the frame memory for further imaging processing so as to obtain useful information for medical diagnosis. Image processing can be performed either by a special pupose processor, or by VAX 11/780. The system is made to operate asyncronously to increase the frame rate with tags assigned to the data. The proposed DSC was designed to be used without much modification for the sector scan system as well.

• Journal of Industrial Technology
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• v.25 no.A
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• pp.87-93
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• 2005

Three-dimensional ultrasonic probes being applied to the medical imaging can be grouped into three depending on the scanning methods, which are a mechanical type system, a free-hand system, and 2D phased arrays system. A mechanical type scanner uses a mechanically driven transducer to acquire series of 2D plane images. By integrating these images, a 3-D medical image can be constructed. A motor driving mechanism is a conventional choice for mechanically driving a transducer assembly which picks the raw ultrasonic images up. In this paper we attempt to design a 3D ultrasonic probe which has a operating mechanism of s tilting 3-D scanning. The motion of a transducer assembly of the ultrasonic probe is analytically modelled. We propose a selection procedure for the diameter of a wire rope driving the transducer assembly and the size of torsional spring which gives an initial tension to wire ropes.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.30-37
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• 2003

In order to replace the manual ultrasonic testing(UT) with an automated UT(AUT), a scanner which enables us to control the positions of a transducer is essential. Encoders have been commonly used to obtain the position information from the conventional scanners controlled by motor. Encoders have various advantages in many aspects. However, if the slip of motor wheel occurs during scanning, various errors are involved in the position accuracy. Thus, the position information of encoders becomes meaningless in case of slip. The reliability of AUT results nay become serious problem. Hence, slip must be avoided, but it can not be completely avoided at present time. In this paper, a new idea that surface wave is used to solve this problem and replace encoders has been proposed. It is shown that this idea can be employed in AUT scanner without encoders. That is, one transducer transmitting surface wave is fixed and the other transducer attached to the scanner receives UT signal. Then, computer calculates the present position of scanner based on the information given by surface wave. Thus, the movement of a scanner can be controlled by the amount of input based on the information obtained.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.504-508
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• 2010

In conventional diagnostic ultrasound strain imaging, when displaying strain image on a monitor, human visual characteristics are utilized such that hard regions are displayed as dark and soft regions are displayed as bright. Thus, hard regions representing tumor or cancer are displayed as dark, decreasing the contrast inside the lesion. Because the lesion area is stiff and thus displayed as dark, a method of inverting the image brightness and thereby increasing the contrast in the lesion for better diagnostic purposes is proposed wherein a postcompression signal is extended in the time domain by a factor corresponding to the reciprocal of the amount of the applied compression using a technique termed globally uniform stretching. Experiments were carried out to verify the proposed method on an ultrasound elasticity phantom with radio-frequency data acquired from a diagnostic ultrasound clinical scanner. It is found that the new method improves the contrast-to-noise ratio by a factor of up to about 1.8 compared to a conventional strain imaging method that employs a reversed gray color map without globally uniform stretching.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.209-211
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• 2007

최근에는 탄소섬유강화복합재료(CFRP)는 우수한 기계적인 물성치와 수월한 설계특성으로 인해 우주.민간 항공산업분야 뿐만 아니라 여러분야에 응용성이 매우 높다. 그러나 CFRP 복합적층판으로 제작된 구조물은 충격손상을 받을 시에는 50-75%치 강도가 낮아지는 취약성을 가지고 있다. 따라서 본 연구에는 CFRP복합재의 구조건전성 및 결함여부를 비파괴적으로 검사 및 탐상을 하기 위해서 시도하였다. 특히, C-scanner의 수침조에서 충격손상을 받은 시험편을 집어넣어 자동 데이터 획득 시스템을 구동하여 현장응용성이 가장 높은 일 방향 초음파측정 (one-sided ultrasonic measurement) 방법인 평가기법을 제안하였다. 본 연구에서 제안한 일방향 초음파 피치캐치방법이 CFRP 복합적층판내에서 일반 수직 초음파 탐상기법보다 훨씬 민감함을 알 수 있었다.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.469-478
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• 1996

In the conventional digital ultrasound scanner, the reflected signal is sampled either in polar coordinates of R-$\theta$ method, or in Cartesian coordinates of uniform ladder algorithm (ULA). The R-$\theta$ scan method necessitates a coordinate transform process which makes hardware complex in comparison with ULA scan mrthoA In spite of this complexity, R-$\theta$ method has a good resolution in ultrasonographic (US) image, since scan direction of the US imaging is a radial direction. In this paper, a new digital scan converter is proposed, which is named the radius uniform ladder algorithm (RULA). The RULA has the rome scan direction as the US scanning in the radial direction and as the display space in the $\theta$ direction. In tllis new approach, sampled points we uniformly distributed in each horizontal line i.n well as in each radial ray so that the data are displayed in the Cartesian coordinates by the 1-D interpolation process. The propped algorithm has an uniform resolution in the periphery and the center field in comparison with equi-angle ULA and equi-interval ULA. To extend the scan angle, concentric square raster sampling (CSRS) is adopted with reduction of discontinuities on the junctions between horizontal scan and vertical scan. The discontinuities are reduced by using the hmction filtering along the $\theta$ direction.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.108-135
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• 1996

This paper investigates the current feature of management strategy of hospitals in Korea, and examines the relationships between adoption of a particular strategic orientation and the hospitals environmental and organizational characteristics, strategic behaviors and management improvement activities, and financial performance. Data were collected from CEOs of 88 hospitals among 650 hospitals for a 13.5% response rate using the self-administered questionnaire by mail survey. The major findings that obtained are as follows: 1. Only 37.2% of response hospitals carried out strategic planning, Most of these hospitals established the first strategic planning in 1991(81.3%) and renovated strategic planning by 4 or 5 years(56.3%), and modified strategic planning with flexibility(59.4%). Most strategic plans were documented, but informalized(68.8%). And only 29.0% of these hospitals had independent planning division. 2. Hospital services that CEOs assessed rank ordered for their impact on profitability are as follows: i)diagnostic ultrasound facility, computerized tomography scanner, obstetric inpatient unit, therapeutic X-ray, and physical therapy at present. ii)diagnostic ultrasound facility, physical therapy, computerized tomography scanner, emergency department, and health screening at future. And the services rank ordered that CEOs hoped to introduce are as follows: emergency department, physical therapy, health screening, volunteer services, and computerized tomography scanner. 3. Using a typology developed by Miles and Snow(l978), the strategic orientation of response hospitals are shifting significantly from defenders in the past to analyzers in the present, and to prospectors in the future(p<.01). 4. With regard to hospital environmental and organizational characteristics such as ownership, physician training, location, bed size, and hospital management training career and specialty of CEOs, the four strategic orientation archetypes varied not significantly. But, hospitals with a analyser orientation in the present and a reactor orientation in the future perceived competition significantly higher than the other three archetypes(p<.05). 5. The four archetypes rank ordered in terms of appling strategic behaviors and management improvement activities are as follows: prospector, analyzer, reactor, and defender. 6. The four archetypes differed significantly in terms of their financial performance using revenue per bed(p<.05). Reactors and prospectors in terms of total revenue per bed, prospectors in terms of outpatient revenue per bed, and reactors and prospectors in terms of inpatient revenue per bed had the best performance.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.223-230
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• 2018

This study examines a non-contact laser scanning-based ultrasound system, called an angular scan pulse-echo ultrasonic propagation imager (A-PE-UPI), that uses coincided laser beams for ultrasonic sensing and generation. A laser Doppler vibrometer is used for sensing, while a diode pumped solid state (DPSS) Q-switched laser is used for generation of thermoelastic waves. A high-speed raster scanning of up to 10-kHz is achieved using a galvano-motorized mirror scanner that allows for coincided sensing and for the generation beam to perform two-dimensional scanning without causing any harm to the surface under inspection. This process allows for the visualization of longitudinal wave propagation through-the-thickness. A pulse-echo ultrasonic wave propagation imaging algorithm (PE-UWPI) is used for on-the-fly damage visualization of the structure. The presented system is very effective for high-speed, localized, non-contact, and non-destructive inspection of aerospace structures. The system is tested on an aluminum honeycomb sandwich with disbonds and a carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) honeycomb sandwich with a layer overlap. Inspection is performed at a 10-kHz scanning speed that takes 16 seconds to scan a $100{\times}100mm^2$ area with a scan interval of 0.25 mm. Finally, a comparison is presented between angular-scanning and a linear-scanning-based pulse-echo UPI system. The results show that the proposed system can successfully visualize defects in the inspected specimens.

• Journal of Korean Dental Science
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.59-66
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• 2020

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the masseter muscle thickness before and after treatment using ultrasound sonography in patients with parafunctional habits. Materials and Methods: From September 2019 to March 2020, a total of 27 patients who visited the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital were collected. The thickness of both masseter muscles was measured using a tablet ultrasound scanner. Statistical analysis was performed by using the IBM SPSS version 26.0 statistical package (IBM Corp) with significance level at 0.05. Result: According to the statistical results, the thickness of the masseter muscle was thicker on the right side than on the left, with no correlation with sex or age. The severity and duration of pain did not have a significant correlation with the thickness of the masseter muscle. Botulinum A toxin injection in the masseter muscle was the most effective way to reduce pain and reduce the thickness of the masseter muscle. Splint treatment also showed some effects in reducing the thickness of the masseter muscle. Conclusion: Based on the findings, it can be claimed that ultrasonography is simple, inexpensive and easily repeatable method to get real-time diagnosis and treatment results for masseter muscles.