• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.976-983
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• 2000

In this paper, Bridcage type RF coils used widely as RF coils for MRI and its applicable type, spiral type RF coil are analyzed and designed using FDTD method. In low tesla (IT, 1.5T) MRI system, several tools have been used for the analysis and design of the RF coils for MRI. This includes, so-called, LC equivalent circuit method for predicting the resonance frequency of the coil and the Biot-Savart law to determine the field distribution within the coil. Both of the circuit analysis and Biot-Savart law are low frequency techniques. Therefore, at high frequency applications, the circuit model approximation breaks down because the coil geometry is a significant fraction of the wavelength. In this paper, we analyzed and designed RF coils for 3T MRI using FDTD method. This method is a full wave analysis and very accurate at low and high frequencies. Also, this RF coils are actually fabricated and FDTD models of RF coils for MRI are proven.

• Dementia and Neurocognitive Disorders
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.110-119
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• 2018

Background and Purpose: To analyze $^{18}F-THK5351$ positron emission tomography (PET) scans of patients with clinically diagnosed nonfluent/agrammatic variant primary progressive aphasia (navPPA). Methods: Thirty-one participants, including those with Alzheimer's disease (AD, n=13), navPPA (n=3), and those with normal control (NC, n=15) who completed 3 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging, $^{18}F-THK5351$ PET scans, and detailed neuropsychological tests, were included. Voxel-based and region of interest (ROI)-based analyses were performed to evaluate retention of $^{18}F-THK5351$ in navPPA patients. Results: In ROI-based analysis, patients with navPPA had higher levels of THK retention in the Broca's area, bilateral inferior frontal lobes, bilateral precentral gyri, and bilateral basal ganglia. Patients with navPPA showed higher levels of THK retention in bilateral frontal lobes (mainly left side) compared than NC in voxel-wise analysis. Conclusions: In our study, THK retention in navPPA patients was mainly distributed at the frontal region which was well correlated with functional-radiological distribution of navPPA. Our results suggest that tau PET imaging could be a supportive tool for diagnosis of navPPA in combination with a clinical history.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.101-106
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• 2009

Purpose of this study is to compare the signal intensity (SI) and CNR with T1 weighted image using FLASH at 3T abdominal MRI by varying flip angle (FA). Totally 20 patients (male : 12, female : 8, Age : $28{\sim}63$ years with mean : 51) were examined by 3 Tesla MR scanner (Magnetom Tim Trio, SIEMENS, Germany) with 8 channel body array coil between september and October 2008. Imaging parameters were as follows : FLASH sequence, TR : 120 ms, TE : minimum, FOV (field of view) : $360{\times}300\;mm$, Matrix : $256{\times}224$, slice : 6 mm, scan time : 15 sec and Breath-hold technique. Abdominal image, with a 50 ml syringe filled with water placed in the FOV measuring the water signal, were acquired with varying FA through $10^{\circ}$ to $90^{\circ}$ with $10^{\circ}$ interval. SI's were measured three times at liver parenchyme, water, spleen and background and averaged. The CNR's were measured between the ROIs (region of interest). Statistic analysis was performed with ANOVA test using SPSS software (version 17.0). Less than FA $30^{\circ}$, abdominal images were severely inhomogeneity. Especially, T1 effect of water signal was weak. As the flip angle increased, the signal intensity decreased at all the regions. Especially, flip angle of the highest signal intensity was observed with $40^{\circ}$ at the liver parenchyme, $20^{\circ}$ at water, $30^{\circ}$ at the spleen, respectively. The CNR between liver and water was -60.92 at FA $10^{\circ}$ and 15.16 at FA $80^{\circ}$. The CNR between liver and spleen was -3.18 at FA $10^{\circ}$ and 9.65 at $80^{\circ}$. In conclusion, FA $80^{\circ}$ is optimal for T1 weighted effect using FLASH pulse sequence at 3.0 T abdominal MRI.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.98-104
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• 2011

Numerical simulation in exploration geophysics provides important insights into subsurface wave propagation phenomena. Although elastic wave simulations take longer to compute than acoustic simulations, an elastic simulator can construct more realistic wavefields including shear components. Therefore, it is suitable for exploration of the responses of elastic bodies. To overcome the long duration of the calculations, we use a Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) to accelerate the elastic wave simulation. Because a GPU has many processors and a wide memory bandwidth, we can use it in a parallelised computing architecture. The GPU board used in this study is an NVIDIA Tesla C1060, which has 240 processors and a 102 GB/s memory bandwidth. Despite the availability of a parallel computing architecture (CUDA), developed by NVIDIA, we must optimise the usage of the different types of memory on the GPU device, and the sequence of calculations, to obtain a significant speedup of the computation. In this study, we simulate two- (2D) and threedimensional (3D) elastic wave propagation using the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method on GPUs. In the wave propagation simulation, we adopt the staggered-grid method, which is one of the conventional FD schemes, since this method can achieve sufficient accuracy for use in numerical modelling in geophysics. Our simulator optimises the usage of memory on the GPU device to reduce data access times, and uses faster memory as much as possible. This is a key factor in GPU computing. By using one GPU device and optimising its memory usage, we improved the computation time by more than 14 times in the 2D simulation, and over six times in the 3D simulation, compared with one CPU. Furthermore, by using three GPUs, we succeeded in accelerating the 3D simulation 10 times.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.177-187
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• 2012

Magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) techniques are widely used in diagnosis of vascular disorders such as hemadostenosis and aneurism. Especially, phase contrast (PC) MRA technique, which is a typical non contrast-enhanced MRA technique, provides not only the anatomy of blood vessels but also flow velocity. In this study, we developed the 2- and 3-dimensional PC MRA pulse sequences for a low magnetic field MRI system. Vessel images were acquired using 2D and 3D PC MRA and the velocities of the blood flow were measured in the superior sagittal sinus, straight sinus and the confluence of the two. The 2D PC MRA provided the good quality of vascular images for large vessels but the poor quality for small ones. Although 3D PC MRA gave more improved visualization of small vessels than 2D PC MRA, the image quality was not enough to be used for diagnosis of the small vessels due to the low SNR and field homogeneity of the low field MRI system. The measured blood velocities were $25.46{\pm}0.73cm/sec$, $24.02{\pm}0.34cm/sec$ and $26.15{\pm}1.50cm/sec$ in the superior sagittal sinus, straight sinus and the confluence of the two, respectively, which showed good agreement with the previous experimental values. Thus, the developed PC MRA technique for low field MRI system is expected to provide the useful velocity information to diagnose the large brain vessels.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Applied Superconductivity and Cryogenics Conference
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• 2002.02a
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• pp.168-170
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• 2002

Magnetization studies were conducted on a single crystal of $YNi_{2}$$B_{2}$C superconductor. The 17 mg crystal was studied at temperatures T from above $T_{c}$ (15.5 K) to 3 K, in the magnetic fields H // c-axis up to 6 tesla. The crystal exhibited little magnetic irreversibility, with a critical current density $CO_{3}$ ~ $10^{-4}$ $\times$ $CO_{3}$, the depairing current density. Near $T_{c}$, the equilibrium magnetization M was London-like with M $\infty$ In(H). The upper critical field $H_{c2}$ of the single crystal $YNi_{2}$$B_{2}$C was estimated by the several alternative approaches such as standard London limit, Ginzburg-Landau, and Abrikosov relations. The estimated $H_{c2}$values agree relatively well with each other approaches.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetic Resonance Society
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.64-83
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of in vivo 3T $^1H$ MRS with short TE for prescreening various brain diseases. Together with ten normal volunteers, 12 brain tumor patients(2 lymphomas, 5 malignant gliomas) and 5(benign meningiomas) and 10 brain ischemic disease patients(6 acute and 4 subacute infarctions) participated. Lymphomas showed increased intensities of Cho and Lac. Likewise, gliomas showed increased Cho and Lac, but with decreased NAA and ${\beta}\;{\gamma}$-Glx; in higher grade of gliomas, Lac, Cho, mI and Lip predominantly increased with decrease of NAA. Benign meningiomas showed increased Cho, Lac and ${\beta}\;{\gamma}$-Glx; with decreased of NAA. The alanine peak at 1.47 ppm is a neuronal marker for meningiomas. Infarctions showed increased Lac and Lip and decreased NAA, ${\alpha}$-Glx and ${\beta}\;{\gamma}$-Glx where Lac increased with decreased of ${\alpha}$-Glx in acute, and Cho, Lac and Lip increased with decrease of NAA in subacute. Elevated Lac and decreased NAA levels were more aggravated in subacute. Clinical application of the $^1H$ MRS with short TE at 3T is able to povide valuable spectral information for prescreening various brain diseases by monitoring the changes of disease-specific cerebral metabolite concentrations in vivo, and consequently, it can be applicable to assessment of differential diagnosis and malignancy as well.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.80-86
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• 2001

Objective: To assess the potential clinical utility of in-vivo 31P magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in patients with various malignant and benign breast lesions. Materials and Methods: Seventeen patients with untreated primary malignant breast lesions (group I), eight patients with untreated benign breast lesions (group II) and seven normal breasts (group III) were included in this study. In-vivo 31P MRS was performed using a 1.5 Tesla MR scanner. Because of the characteristics of the coil, the volume of the tumor had to exceed 12 cc (3×2×2 cm), with a superoinferior diameter at least 3 cm. Mean and standard deviations of each metabolite were calculated and metabolite ratios, such as PME/PCr, PDE/PCr, T-ATP/PCr and PCr/T-ATP were calculated and statistically analyzed. Results: Significant differences in PME were noted between groups I and III (p=0.0213), and between groups II and III (p=0.0213). The metabolite ratios which showed significant differences were PME/PCr (between groups II and III) (p=0.0201), PDE/PCr (between groups I and III, and between groups II and III) (p=0.0172), T-ATP/PCr (between groups II and III) (p=0.0287), and PCr/T-ATP (between groups II and III) (p=0.0287). There were no significant parameters between groups I and II. Conclusion: In-vivo 31P MRS is not helpful for establishing a differential diagnosis between benign and malignant breast lesions, at least with relatively large lesions greater than 3 cm in one or more dimensions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.83 no.1
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• pp.149-161
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• 2022

Purpose To investigate the correlation between computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) parameters in 3-tesla (T) MRI and pathologic immunohistochemical (IHC) markers in invasive carcinoma of no special type (NST). Materials and Methods A total of 94 female who were diagnosed with NST carcinoma and underwent 3T MRI using CAD, from January 2018 to April 2019, were included. The relationship between angiovolume, curve peak, and early and late profiles of dynamic enhancement from CAD with pathologic IHC markers and molecular subtypes were retrospectively investigated using Dwass, Steel, Critchlow-Fligner multiple comparison analysis, and univariate binary logistic regression analysis. Results In NST carcinoma, a higher angiovolume was observed in tumors of higher nuclear and histologic grades and in lymph node (LN) (+), estrogen receptor (ER) (-), progesterone receptor (PR) (-), human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2) (+), and Ki-67 (+) tumors. A high rate of delayed washout and a low rate of delayed persistence were observed in Ki-67 (+) tumors. In the binary logistic regression analysis of NST carcinoma, a high angiovolume was significantly associated with a high nuclear and histologic grade, LN (+), ER (-), PR (-), HER2 (+) status, and non-luminal subtypes. A high rate of washout and a low rate of persistence were also significantly correlated with the Ki-67 (+) status. Conclusion Angiovolume and delayed washout/persistent rate from CAD parameters in contrast enhanced breast MRI correlated with predictive IHC markers. These results suggest that CAD parameters could be used as clinical prognostic, predictive factors.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.29-37
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• 1992

The temporomandibular joint was evaluated using magnetic resonance imaging using a urface coil in 11 patients having reciprocal clicking or locking and compared with the normal joint in five subjects. Serial multisection 3㎜-thick parasagittal, paracoronal, and axial image on both closing and opening mouth were obtained with a 1.5 Tesla MR system and surface coil using CSMEMP, GRASS, MPGR, powerful extensions of fast imaging that is currently under clinical evaluation. MR images obtained were analized correlating with the theory of internal derangement. The obtained results were as follows: 1. The serial findings of structures in joint were determined on the serially sectioned images of joint with reciprocal clicking or locking by CSMEMP and MPGR on closing mouth. 2. The delta shaped white images of synovial fluid in the glenoid fossa and on the posterior surface of condyle were revealed on the parasagittal images by MPGR on opening mouth as in the normal joints. 3. The white image of joint fluid surrounding meniscus was recognized on the paracoronal image by GRASS on opening mouth as in the normal joints. 4. In joints having temporomandibular dysfunction the smooth image of displaced meniscus was recognized, but otherwise in the normal joints the image of muscle was noted on the paracoronal image sectioned at the anterior portion of condyle by GRASS. 5. The more thickened fascial plane between superior and inferior belly of lateral pterygoid muscle was not recognizable in joints having temporomandibular dysfunction than in the normal joints.