In image-guided surgery, automatic bone segmentation of Computed Tomography (CT) images is an important but challenging step. Previous attempts include intensity-, edge-, region-, and deformable curve-based approaches [1], but none claims fully satisfactory performance. Although active contour (AC) techniques possess many excellent characteristics, their applications in CT image segmentation have not worthily exploited yet. In this study, we have evaluated the automaticity and performance of the model of Chan-Vese Multiphase AC Without Edges towards knee bone segmentation from CT images. This model is suitable because it is initialization-insensitive and topology-adaptive. Its segmentation results have been qualitatively compared with those from four other widely used AC models: namely Gradient Vector Flow (GVF) AC, Geometric AC, Geodesic AC, and GVF Fast Geometric AC. To quantitatively evaluate its performance, the results from a commercial software and a medical expert have been used. The evaluation results show that the Chan-Vese model provides superior performance with least user interaction, proving its suitability for automatic bone segmentation from CT images.

The study relates to achievement and analysis of 3-dimensional spatial pulse wave archived by a spatially arterial pulse diagnostic apparatus (SAPDA), wherein a pulse sensing part array consists of multiple hall devices and is located over a skin contacting part which consists of a magnetic material. When a radially arterial pulse is transferred to the magnetic material, which is contacted skin that results in changes in a magnetic field of the lower part of the pulse sensing part array, the changes in a magnetic field can be detected by the commercial Hall semiconductor device of the pulse sensing part array. Finally, according to development of SAPDA, the 3-dimensionally arterial pulse waveform can be measured noninvasively by detecting the changes of the magnetic field.

All of us has an experience of using the word 'stress'. During the life, we are influenced with various physical and spiritual pressure, complication, discouragement and shortage. That much, stress exists everywhere and everytime around us. It is not easy to examine how much stress you are getting. You can examine only through the health institutions. The examining method is constituted with the psychological method and physiological method, but these methods have the low accuracy about stress index because of disproportion of subjectivity, objectivity and scientific. Consequently, this thesis suggests the algorithms of processing index to help easing stress which is able to examine personally and indexing with the mixing of results of psychological and physiological methods.

Background noise is one of the major complaints of not only hearing impaired persons but also normal listeners. This paper describes the results of two experiments in which speech recognition performance was determined for listeners with normal hearing and sensorineural hearing loss in noise environment. First, we compared speech enhancement algorithms by evaluation speech recognition ability in various speech-to-noise ratios and types of noise. Next, speech enhancement algorithms by reducing background noise were presented and evaluated to improve speech intelligibility for sensorineural hearing impairment listeners. We tested three noise reduction methods using single-microphone, such as spectrum subtraction and companding, Wiener filter method, and maximum likelihood envelop estimation. Their responses in background noise were investigated and compared with those by the speech enhancement algorithm that presented in this paper. The methods improved speech recognition test score for the sensorineural hearing impaired listeners, but not for normal listeners. The results suggest the speech enhancement algorithm with the loudness compression can improve speech intelligibility for listeners with sensorineural hearing loss.

Kinematic and kinetic analysis has been performed for Soft Golf swings utilizing realistic three dimensional computer simulations based on three dimensional motion tracking data. Soft Golf is a newly developed recreational sport in South Korea aimed to become a safe and easy-to-learn sport for all ages. The advantage of Soft Golf stems from lighter weight of the club and much larger area of the sweet spot. This paper tries to look into kinematic and kinetic aspects of soft golf swings compared to regular golf swing and find the advantages of lighter Soft Golf clubs. For this purpose, swing motions of older aged participants were captured and kinematic analysis was performed for various kinematic parameters such as club head velocity, joint angular velocity, and joint range of motions as a pilot study. Kinetic analysis was performed by applying kinematic data to computer simulation models constructed from anthropometric database and the measurements from the participants. The simulations were solved using multi-body dynamics solver. Firstly, the kinematic parameters such as joint angles were obtained by solving inverse dynamics problem based on motion tracking data. Secondly, the kinetic parameters such as joint torques were obtained by solving control dynamics problem of making joint torque to follow pre-defined joint angle data. The results showed that mechanical loadings to major joints were reduced with lighter Soft Golf club.

The linear SEF (Spectral Edge Frequency) parameter and spectrum analysis method can not reflect the non-linear of EEG. This method can not contribute to acquire real time analysis and obtain a high confidence in the clinic due to low discrimination. To solve the problems, the development of a new index is carried out using the bispectrum analyzing the EEG including the non-linear characteristic. At the bispectrum analysis of the 2 dimension, the most significant's power spectrum density peaks appeared much at the specific area in awake and anesthesia state. Because many peaks are showed at the specific area in the frequency coordinate, these points are used to create the new index. Range of the index is 0-100. At the anesthesia, the index is 20-50 and at the awake, the index is 90-60. New index can discriminate the awake and anesthesia state.

For the combination of phosphor screens having various thicknesses and a photodiode array manufactured by complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process, we report the observation of image-quality degradation under the irradiation of 45-kVp spectrum x rays. The image quality was assessed in terms of dark pixel signal, dynamic range, modulation-transfer function (MTF), noise-power spectrum (NPS), and detective quantum efficiency (DQE). For the accumulation of the absorbed dose, the radiation-induced increase both in dark signal and noise resulted in the gradual reduction in dynamic range. While the MTF was only slightly affected by the total ionizing dose, the noise power in the case of $Min-R^{TM}$ screen, which is the thinnest one among the considered screens in this study, became larger as the total dose was increased. This is caused by incomplete correction of the dark current fixed-pattern noise. In addition, the increase tendency in NPS was independent of the spatial frequency. For the cascaded model analysis, the additional noise source is from direct absorption of x-ray photons. The change in NPS with respect to the total dose degrades the DQE. However, with carefully updated and applied correction, we can overcome the detrimental effects of increased dark current on NPS and DQE. This study gives an initial motivation that the periodic monitoring of the image-quality degradation is an important issue for the long-term and healthy use of digital x-ray imaging detectors.

A new type of the fluid circulation blood pressure simulator was proposed to enhance the blood pressure simulator used for the development and evaluation of automatic sphygmomanometers. Various pressure waveform of fluid flowing in the pipe was reproduced by operating the proportional control valve after applying a pressure on the fluid in pressurized oil tank. After that, appropriate fluid was supplied by operating the proportional control valve, which enabled to reproduce various pressure wave of the fluid flowing in the tube. To accomplish this work, the mathematical model was carefully reviewed in cooperating with the proposed simulator. After modeling the driving signal as input signal and the pressure in internal tube as output signal, the simulation on system parameters such as internal volume, cross-section of orifice and supply pressure, which are sensitive to dynamic characteristic of system, was accomplished. System parameters affecting the dynamic characteristic were analyzed in the frequency bandwidth and also reflected to the design of the plant. The performance evaluator of fluid dynamic characteristic using proportional control signal was fabricated on the basis of obtained simulation result. An experimental apparatus was set-up and measurements on the dynamic characteristic, nonlinearity, and rising and falling response was carried out to verify the characteristic of the fluid dynamic model. Controller was designed and thereafter, simulation was performed to control the output signal with respect to the reference input in the fluid dynamic model using the proposed proportional control valve. Hybrid controller combined with an proportional controller and feed-forward controller was fabricated after applying a disturbance observer to the control plant. Comparison of the simulations between the conventional proportional controller and the proposed hybrid simulator indicated that even though the former showed good control performance.

In this paper, Finger-Toe Index (FTI) is proposed as an analytic parameter for the characterization of arterial vessel. Different from the currently being employed pulse wave velocity (PWV) information of the volume pulse wave measured from 4 arterial channels, the proposed FTI uses the ratio of the shorter of the two up-stroke time of PPG from fingers ($UT_{finger}$) and that of PPG (Photoplethysmography) from toes ($UT_{toe}$). To verify the usefulness of the proposed method, Finger-Toe Indexes were derived from the volume pulse waves acquired from 50 people under examination aged from 12 to 81 years old, and they were then compared with blood pressure ankle-brachial index (ABI). It was successfully demonstrated that the arterial stiffness can be estimated with respect to age and FTI is more strongly correlated with the pulse transit time than ABI. From the regression analysis, we also found that FTI has significant correlation PWV for a quantitative index of arterial stiffness and provides more accurate information than ABI for the characterization of arterial vessel.

Up to now, surgeons have operated while peering at images which visualize the medical state of the patient such as MRI or CT images. On the other hand, direct-projected augmented reality technology liberates surgeons from the inconvenience by directly projecting medical information onto the patient's body. However surgeons still feel inconvenient when they mark surgical targets for planning an operation because they use an ink pen which is difficult to modify or delete and is also likely to be unsanitary. In this paper, we resolve these problems by proposing an interactive user interface based on direct-projected augmented reality technology and its validity is shown in experimental results.

This paper proposes a semiautomatic vertebra segmentation method that overcomes limitations of both manual segmentation requiring tedious user interactions and fully automatic segmentation that is sensitive to initial conditions. The proposed method extracts fence surfaces between vertebrae, and segments a vertebra using fence-limited region growing. A fence surface is generated by a deformable model utilizing valley information in a valley emphasized Gaussian image. Fence-limited region growing segments a vertebra using gray value homogeneity and fence surfaces acting as barriers. The proposed method has been applied to ten patient data sets, and produced promising results accurately and efficiently with minimal user interaction.

The synthetic focusing in the ultrasonic imaging systems has been formed in the way that one element transmits a circular wave and receives an echo signal. The amplitude of the signal transmitted from one element is too small to propagate a long distance so that the SNR(Signal to Noise Ratio) is very low in an image obtained by the synthetic focusing. To solve this problem, a defocusing method which uses several elements has been proposed. In this method, the SNR is improved due to using several elements to transmit the circular wave. But if the number of transmitting elements increases, the phase distortion is severe in the defocusing method. In this paper, we propose a new method that can generate a circular wave using a lot of elements without phase distortion. At first, we generate limited plane waves with different propagation angles and then superpose them to make a circular wave. We show that the circular wave can be used to improve SNR in the real-time 3D ultrasonic imaging as well as the synthetic focusing through computer simulation and experiments.

Although synthetic aperture focusing techniques can improve the spatial resolution of ultrasound imaging, they have not been employed in a commercial product because they require a real-time N-channel beamformer with a tremendously increased hardware complexity for simultaneous beamforming along M multiple lines. In this paper, a hardware-efficient beamformer architecture for synthetic aperture focusing is presented. In contrast to the straightforward design using NM delay calculators, the proposed method utilizes only M delay calculators by sharing the same values among the focusing delays which should be calculated at the same time between the N channels for all imaging points along the M scan lines. In general, synthetic aperture beamforming requires M 2-port memories. In the proposed beamformer, the input data for each channel is first upsampled with a 4-fold interpolator and each polyphase component of the interpolator output is stored into a 2-port memory separately, requiring 4M 2-port memories for each channel. By properly limiting the area formed with the synthetic aperture focusing, the input memory buffer can be implemented with only 4 2-port memories and one short multi-port memory.

The social activities of the elderly have been increasing as our society progresses toward an aging society. As their activities are increased, the occurrence of falls that could lead to fractures are increased. Falls are serious health hazards to the elderly and we need more thorough understanding of falls including the progress of falls and the impact area in various fall directions. Many of the traditional methods of falls research dealt with voluntary falls by younger subject since older subject can easily get fracture from voluntary falls. So, it has been difficult to get exact data about falls of the elderly. Here, we tried to capture the characteristics of the movements of major joints using three dimensional motion capture system during falls experiments using a moving mattress that can safely induce unexpected falls. Healthy younger subjects participated in the actual falls experiment and the moving mattress was actuated by a pneumatic system. The kinematic parameters such as velocities and accelerations of major segments were imported to a computer simulation environment and falls to hard surfaces were simulated in a computational environment using a realistic human model of aged persons. The simulation was able to give approximations to contact forces which can occur during actual falls.

Tractography using Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DT-MRI) is a method to determine the architecture of axonal fibers in the central nervous system by computing the direction of the principal eigenvector in the white matter of the brain. However, the fiber tracking methods suffer from the noise included in the diffusion tensor images that affects the determination of the principal eigenvector. As the fiber tracking progresses, the accumulated error creates a large deviation between the calculated fiber and the real fiber. This problem of the DT-MRI tractography is known mathematically as the ill-posed problem which means that tractography is very sensitive to perturbations by noise. To reduce the noise in DT-MRI measurements, a tensor-valued median filter which is reported to be denoising and structure-preserving in fiber tracking, is applied in the tractography. In this paper, we proposed the modified gradient descent method which converges fast and accurately to the optimal tensor-valued median filter by changing the step size. In addition, the performance of the modified gradient descent method is compared with others. We used the synthetic image which consists of 45 degree principal eigenvectors and the corticospinal tract. For the synthetic image, the proposed method achieved 4.66%, 16.66% and 15.08% less error than the conventional gradient descent method for error measures AE, AAE, AFA respectively. For the corticospinal tract, at iteration number ten the proposed method achieved 3.78%, 25.71 % and 11.54% less error than the conventional gradient descent method for error measures AE, AAE, AFA respectively.

An elbow orthosis with a pneumatic rubber actuator has been developed to assist and enhance upper limb movements and has been examined for the effectiveness. The effectiveness of the elbow orthosis was examined by comparing muscular activities during alternate dumbbell curl exercises with and without the orthosis. The subjects participated in the experiment were younger adults in their twenties. The subjects were instructed to perform dumbbell curl motion in a sitting position with and without orthosis in turn and a dynamometer was used to measure elbow joint torque outputs in an isovelocity mode. The measurements were done with four various dumbbell loads: 0 kg, 1 kg, 3 kg, and 5 kg. The orthosis was pneumatically actuated and controlled in a passive mode. The most comfortable air pressure to the pneumatic actuator was determined to be 0.294MPa. Electromyography(EMG) was also measured during curl exercises. The muscles of interest were biceps brachii(BB), triceps brachii(TB), brachioradialis(Bo), and flexor carpi ulnaris(FCU) in the upper limbs. The experimental results showed that the muscular activities themselves significantly reduced with elbow orthosis on in performing similar activities without orthosis. As a result of this experiment, the effectiveness of the developed upper limb orthosis was confirmed and the level of assistance was quantified.

In this study, a new bicycle system was developed to improve muscular strength using the Magneto-Rheological(MR) rotary brake. The friction load of the MR rotary brake is adjusted according to muscle strength of the subjects. The characteristic of muscular strength was studied with various friction loads of MR rotary brake. The friction load was occurred with the current, applied to the MR. rotary brake. Experiments was composed of several cycling trials for various friction loads. In training programs involving muscle improvement, it is necessary to confirm muscle activity and fatigue. To measure the muscle activity and fatigue, EMG signals of rectus femoris (RF), biceps femoris (BF), tensor fasciae latae (TFL), vastus lateralis (VL), vastus medialis (VAS), gastrocnemius (GAS), tibialis anterior (TA) and soleus (SOL) muscles were collected with surface electromyography and analyzed into time and frequency domain. The experimental results showed that the muscle activity according to the applied current to the MR rotary brake was significantly different. The more the current was applied, the higher value of the integrated EMG (IEMG) was obtained. Especially, the magnitude of IEMG of the RF, BF, TFL and VL varied in direct proportion to the current. However, there was not significant in the median frequency as the cycling time continue.