• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.871-872
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• 2008

The method and results of the software implementation of a echo processor for medical ultrasound imaging using a GPU (NVIDIA G80) is presented. The echo signal processing functions are modified in a SIMD manner suitable for the GPU's massively parallel processing architecture so that the GPU's 128 ALUs are utilized nearly 100%. The preliminary result for a frame of image composed of 128 scan lines, each having 10240 16-bit samples, shows that the echo processor can be inplemented at a high rate of 30 frames per second when implemented in C, which is close to the optimized assembly codes running on the TI's TMS320C6416 DSP.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.8-15
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• 1988

A split-spectrum processing technique for an ultrasonic flaw detection system has been developed, which improves the flaw-to-grain echo ratio in large-grained materials. The enhancement is achieved by partitioning a wide-band received spectrum to obtain frequency shifted bands, which are then processed to suppress the grain echoes with respect to the flaw echo, using a novel signal minimization algorithm. A technique for suppression of grain echoes has also been devised which takes advantage of the fact that the grain echo amplitude changes with the frequency of the incident ultrasound whereas the flaw echo amplitude does not. The combination of this technique and the new flaw detection system greatly improve the capabilities of ultrasonic evaluation of large grain materials.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2002.06e
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• pp.277-280
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• 2002

In this paper, it is fundamental purpose that finding the relationship between quality and structure of bone, by reconstructing the bone structure image, using ultrasound. In this study, longitudinal transmission method was used for experiment as basic measuring method, which is known as ultrasonic diagnosis method for human tibia. And using ultrasonic velocity parameter that can be detected and calculated with the transmitted signal, new estimated parameter, called Bone Area Fraction, is applied to reconstruct image. Through the in-vitro experiment in cattle's tibia bone, basic sectional image of bone which is similar in real bone structure image can be reconstructed.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.77-84
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• 1984

A prototype of a linear real-time ultrasound B-scanner has been developed which has an axial resolution of 1-2mm and lateral resolution of 2-3mm. In the actual hardware and software implementations of the B-scanner, the following features were emphasized; (1) a dynamic focusing to improve resolution; (2) signal processing to obtain low noise image; (3) various functions for the user's convenience' (4) simplification of the system by an extensive use of recently developed LSI's; (5) development of a prototype at the level of a commercial product. This paper reports the experimental results of the overall system and the design approach of the analog part. The work on the digital part of the B-scanner is reported in part (II) seperately.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.353-358
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• 2015

In this study, we analyzed two types of echolocation calls used by the parti-coloured bat, Vespertilio sinensis. Bats were captured in the Naejangsan National Park in October 2013. Call sounds of hand-released bats were recorded at the location of capture within the National Park. We analyzed pulse duration (PD), pulse interval (PI), peak frequency (PF), maximum frequency ($F_{MAX}$), minimum frequency ($F_{MIN}$), and bandwidth (BW). V. sinensis emitted the different types of the echolocation calls depending on the surrounding environment. Frequency modulated-constant frequency (FM-CF) signal of audible range was emitted when they flew in the uncluttered space over the canopy. However, when flying in the cluttered space below the canopy, they only emitted FM signal. FM-CF signal is in the audible range (e.g., low frequency), and FM signal has a harmonic broadband frequency range of two. There were significant differences in PD, PI, PF, FMAX, FMIN, and BW between the calls emitted over and below the canopy. Considering the functional characteristics of FM and CF signals, we conclude that the foraging activity of V. sinensis was observed below the canopy, and recommend the use of FM signal and broadband as echolocation signals.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.239-248
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• 2011

In order to improve the quality of strain images in medical ultrasound imaging, displacements need to be accurately estimated. In this paper, in order to apply one-dimensional displacement estimation methods to two-dimensional motion estimation, the axial and lateral displacements are separately estimated. In order to estimate lateral displacements, one-dimensional signals aligned in the lateral direction are converted to analytic signals, which are then crosscorrelated. Strain images are produced by first compensating two-dimensional displacements for lateral motion with lateral motion displacement estimates obtained from the proposed lateral displacement estimation algorithm and then estimating axial displacements. Both phantom and human data experiments show that the proposed method provides better signal-to-noise ratio and contrast-to-noise ratio characteristics than a conventional strain imaging method that utilizes axial displacement estimates only.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.250-257
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• 2007

Functional gastrointestinal disorders affect millions of people of all age regardless of race and sex. There are, however, rare diagnostic methods for the functional gastrointestinal disorders because functional disorders show no evidence of organic and physical causes. Our research group identified recently that the gastrointestinal tract well in the patients with the functional gastrointestinal disorders becomes more rigid than healthy people when palpating the abdominal regions overlaying the gastrointestinal tract. The aim is, therefore, to develop a diagnostic method for the functional gastrointestinal disorders based on quantitative measurement of the rigidity of the gastrointestinal tract well using ultrasound technique. For this purpose, a preliminary ultrasound diagnostic system was developed and verified through phantom tests. The system consisted of transmitter, ultrasonic transducer, receiver, TGC, and CPLD, and verified via a phantom test. For the phantom test, ten soft-tissue specimens were harvested from porcine. Five of them were then treated chemically to mimic a rigid condition of gastrointestinal tract well, which was induced by functional gastrointestinal disorders. Additionally, the specimens were tested mechanically to identify if the mimic was reasonable. The customized ultrasound system was finally verified through application to human subjects with/without functional gastrointestinal disorders(Normal and Patient Groups). It was identified from the mechanical test that the chemically treated specimens were more rigid than normalspecimen. This finding was favorably compared with the result obtained from the phantom test. The phantom test also showed that ultrasound system well described the specimen geometric characteristics and detected an alteration in the specimens. The maximum amplitude of the ultrasonic reflective signal in the rigid specimens $(0.2{\pm}0.1Vp-p)$ at the interface between the fat and muscle layers was explicitly higher than that in the normal specimens $(0.1{\pm}0.0Vp-p)$ (p<0.05). Clinical tests using our customized ultrasound system for human subject showed that the maximum amplitudes of the ultrasonic reflective signals nea. to the gastrointestinal tract well for the patient group$(2.6{\pm}0.3Vp-p)$ were generally higher than those in normal group$(0.1{\pm}0.2Vp-p)$ (p<0.05). These results suggest that newly designed diagnostic system based on ultrasound technique may diagnose enough the functional gastrointestinal disorders.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.1207-1212
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• 2018

The ultrasound image uses ultrasonic pulses to receive the reflected waves and construct an image necessary for diagnosis. At this time, when the signal becomes weak, noise is generated and a slight difference in brightness occurs. In addition, fluctuation of image due to breathing phenomenon, which is the characteristic of ultrasound image, and change of motion in real time occurs. Such a noise is difficult to recognize and diagnose visually in the analysis process. In this paper, morphological features are automatically extracted by using image processing technique on ultrasound acquired images. In this paper, we implemented a GPU - based fast filter using a cloud big data processing platform for image processing. In applying the GPU - based high - performance filter, the algorithm was run with performance 4.7 times faster than CPU - based and the PSNR was 37.2dB, which is very similar to the original.

• 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 Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.39-46
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• 1984

In order to improve the performance of ultrasonic diagnostic equipment, it is important to development the signal processing considering the ultrasonic properties of biological medium and propagation mechanism in tissue. Attenuation coefficient is not only important factor to analyze propagation properties, but also it is significant to estimate it in view of tissue characterization, so we show one of the method to estimate attenuation coefficient of biological tissue and the results of estimation.