• Biomedical Engineering Letters
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.355-364
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• 2018

When focusing using an ultrasonic transducer array, a main lobe is formed in the focal region of an ultrasound field, but side lobes also arise around the focal region due to the leakage. Since the side lobes cannot be completely eliminated in the focusing process, they are responsible for subsequent ultrasound image quality degradation. To improve ultrasound image quality, a signal processing strategy to reduce side lobes is definitely in demand. To this end, quantitative determination of main and side lobes is necessary. We propose a theoretically and actually error-free method of exactly discriminating and separately computing the main lobe and side lobe parts in ultrasound image by computer simulation. We refer to images constructed using the main and side lobe signals as the main and side lobe images, respectively. Since the main and side lobe images exactly represent their main and side lobe components, respectively, they can be used to evaluate ultrasound image quality. Defining the average brightness of the main and side lobe images, the conventional to side lobe image ratio, and the main to side lobe image ratio as image quality metrics, we can evaluate image characteristics in speckle images. The proposed method is also applied in assessing the performance of side lobe suppression filtering. We show that the proposed method may greatly aid in the evaluation of medical ultrasonic images using computer simulations, albeit lacking the use of actual experimental data.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.678-700
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• 2023

Diagnosing breast diseases using ultrasound (US) images remains challenging because it is time-consuming and requires expert radiologist knowledge. As a result, the diagnostic performance is significantly biased. To assist radiologists in this process, computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems have been developed and used in practice. This type of system is used not only to assist radiologists in examining breast ultrasound images (BUS) but also to ensure the effectiveness of the diagnostic process. In this study, we propose a new approach for breast lesion localization and segmentation using a multi-scale pyramid of the ultrasound image of a breast organ and a convolutional semantic segmentation network. Unlike previous studies that used only a deep detection/segmentation neural network on a single breast ultrasound image, we propose to use multiple images generated from an input image at different scales for the localization and segmentation process. By combining the localization/segmentation results obtained from the input image at different scales, the system performance was enhanced compared with that of the previous studies. The experimental results with two public datasets confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed approach by producing superior localization/segmentation results compared with those obtained in previous studies.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.66 no.2
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• pp.172-182
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• 2023

Objective : The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is an obstacle for molecules to pass through from blood to the brain. Focused ultrasound is a new method which temporarily opens the BBB, which makes pharmaceutical delivery or removal of neurodegenerative proteins possible. This study was demonstrated to review our BBB opening procedure with magnetic resonance guided images and find specific patterns in the BBB opening. Methods : In this study, we reviewed the procedures and results of two clinical studies on BBB opening using focused ultrasound regarding its safety and clinical efficacy. Magnetic resonance images were also reviewed to discover any specific findings. Results : Two clinical trials showed clinical benefits. All clinical trials demonstrated safe BBB opening, with no specific side effects. Magnetic resonance imaging showed temporary T1 contrast enhancement in the sonication area, verifying the BBB opening. Several low-signal intensity spots were observed in the T2 susceptibility-weighted angiography images, which were also reversible and temporary. Although these spots can be considered as microbleeding, evidence suggests these are not ordinary microbleeding but an indicator for adequate BBB opening. Conclusion : Magnetic resonance images proved safe and efficient BBB opening in humans, using focused ultrasound.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.380-389
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• 2006

A new laser-based ultrasonic receiver that is based on multi-channel interferometry is shown to be well suited for robust and sensitive detection of ultrasound in industrial environment. The proposed architecture combines random-quadrature detection with detector arrays and parallel multi-speckle processing. The high sensitivity is reached, thanks to the random phase distribution of laser speckle caused by surface roughness. High-density parallel signal processing is achieved by using a simple demodulation technique based on signal rectification. This simple detection scheme is also demonstrated for rejection of the laser intensity noise, making possible the use of lower cost laser without reduction in performances. Results demonstrating this new principle of operation and its performances are presented.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.40-47
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• 1999

Focusing is widely used to increase the resolution in ultrasound transmit field. It increases signal levels returning from the mainlobe direction and decreases those due to sidelobe directions. However, when the sidelobes cannot be completely canceled, the resulting image resolution is greatly deteriorated. This paper proposes a method of improving the resolution by scaling the received signal according to the difference between the mainlobe and sidelobe levels computed in the frequency domain by the use of Fourier transform. The proposed method is verified by computer simulation and experiments, and is shown to be highly effective in narrowing the mainlobe width and decreasing the sidelobe levels.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2001.11c
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• pp.187-190
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• 2001

A new ultrasound imaging technique based on simultaneous multiple transmit focusing using orthogonal modified Golay codes is presented. modified Golay codes are used to increase signal-to-noise-ratio(SNR) and maximize the transmit power efficiency(TPE). Conventional Golay codes consist of a pair of complementary codes with same length and can be compressed into a delta-like signal due to their complementary property. In the present work, two modified Golay codes focused at different depths are transmitted at the same time, which are mutually orthogonal. On receive, these orthogonal modified Golay codes are separately compressed into two short pulses and individually focused. These two focused beam are combined to form a frame of image with improved lateral resolution. Computer simulations are performed to verity the proposed method improves the lateral resolution of image compared with the conventional echo system.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.389-396
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• 1986

A pulsed ultrasonic doppler flowmeter for mesurements of velocity profils in man is described. The device projects a beam of ultrasound in burst of 570 ns duration at 3.5 MHz. The back-scattered signals are processed to produce a signal oxrresponding to the mean velocity over a small region of the flowing stream. The observation range of 112mm is divided into 128 depth channels. The size of this sample volume determines the flowmeter sensitivity and accuracy. The device uses a quadrature detector to detect the direction of the moving target(hemoglobin). The main feature of the novel instrumnet is its simple hardware structure due to sequential signal processing.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.27 no.3E
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• pp.84-94
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• 2008

Displacement estimation is a crucial step in ultrasonic strain imaging. The displacement between a pre- and postcompression signal in the current data window is estimated by first shifting the postcompression signal by the displacement obtained in the previous data window to reduce their decorrelation and then determining the remaining part of the displacement through autocorrelation and conversion of phase difference into time delay. However, since strain image quality tends to vary with the amount of compression applied, we propose two new methods for enhancing strain image quality, i.e., displacement normalization and adaptive persistence. Both in vitro and in vivo experiments are carried out to acquire ultrasound data and produce strain images in real time under the application of quasi static compression. The experimental results demonstrate that the methods are quite effective in improving strain image quality and thus can be applied to implementing an ultrasound elasticity imaging system that operates in real time.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.121.2-121.2
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• 2003

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.693-699
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• 2023

Ultrasound is widely used in the medical field for non-destructive and non-invasive disease diagnosis. In order to improve the disease diagnosis accuracy of diagnostic medical images, improving spatial resolution is a very important factor. In this study, we aim to model the super resolution convolutional neural network (SRCNN) algorithm in ultrasound images and analyze its applicability in the medical diagnostic field. The study was conducted as an experimental study using Field II simulation and open source clinical liver hemangioma ultrasound imaging. The proposed SRCNN algorithm was modeled so that end-to-end learning can be applied from low resolution (LR) to high resolution. As a result of the simulation, we confirmed that the full width at half maximum in the phantom image using a Field II program was improved by 41.01% compared to LR when SRCNN was used. In addition, the peak to signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index (SSIM) evaluation results showed that SRCNN had the excellent value in both simulated and real liver hemangioma ultrasound images. In conclusion, the applicability of SRCNN to ultrasound images has been proven, and we expected that proposed algorithm can be used in various diagnostic medical fields.