• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.115-120
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• 2004

Molecular imaging is a rapidly growing field due to the advances in molecular biology and imaging technologies. With the introduction of imaging reporter genes into the cell, diverse cellular processes can be monitored, quantified and imaged non-invasively in vivo. These precesses include the gene expression, protein-protein interactions, signal transduction pathways, and monitoring of cells such as cancer cells, immune cells, and stem cells. In the near future, molecular imaging analysis will allow us to observe the incipience and progression of the disease. These will make us easier to give a diagnosis in the early stage of intractable diseases such as canter, neuro-degenerative disease, and immunological disorders. Additionally, molecular imaging method will be a valuable tool for the real-time evaluation of cells in molecular biology and the basic biological studies. As newer and more powerful molecular imaging tools become available, it will be necessary to corporate clinicians, molecular biologists and biochemists for the planning, interpretation, and application of these techniques to their fullest potential. in order for such a multidisciplinary team to be effective, it is essential that a common understanding of basic biochemical and molecular biologic techniques is achieved. Basic molecular techniques for molecular imaging methods are presented in this paper.

• Journal of Radiopharmaceuticals and Molecular Probes
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.9-14
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• 2015

Hypoxia has been shown in many tumors because of a reduced oxygen condition. A useful approach to detect hypoxia is to use molecular imaging. Positron emission tomography (PET), one of the biomedical molecular imaging tools, is the most common non-invasive technique for providing information about physiological and biological events such as diseases. In order to use the PET technique for healthcare, promising molecular probes such as PET tracers required. [$^{18}F$]Fluoromisonidazole ([$^{18}F$]FMISO) is the most widely used in PET tracers for hypoxia. In this review, major developments of the synthetic method of [$^{18}F$]FMISO are discussed.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.265-270
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• 2007

Polarization imaging systems have been widely used to selectively characterize skin lesions. Nevertheless, current systems are used in single-mode due to the limitations of a fixed polarization mode and a single-working distance of light source, in which uniform light distribution is achieved on target area. To address such limitations, we developed a variable polarization imaging system based on multi-working distance of light source for various clinical diagnoses. In this study, we characterize the imaging system and present experiment results demonstrating its clinical usefulness. The imaging system consists of a CCD color camera, linear polarization filters, and a single-layered LED ring light source which provides uniform light distribution at multi-working distances. The first polarizer was placed on the light source and the second polarizer placed on objective lens provides continuous linear polarization angle from $0^{\circ}\;to\;90^{\circ}$. The clinical efficacy of the imaging system was investigated by acquiring and analyzing clinical images of skin wrinkle and dental plaque. With the experiments, we verified the potential usefulness of the imaging system for other clinical applications.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.471-476
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• 2007

Various active microwave imaging techniques have been developed for cancer detection for past several decades. Both the microwave tomography and the UWB radar techniques, constituting functional microwave imaging systems, use the electrical property contrast between normal tissues and malignancies to detect the latter in an early development stage. Even though promising simulation results have been reported, the understanding of the functional microwave imaging diagnostics has been relied heavily on the complicated numerical results. We present a computationally efficient and physically instructive analytical electromagnetic wave channel models developed for functional microwave imaging system in order to detect especially the breast tumors as early as possible. The channel model covers the propagation factors that have been examined in the previous 2-D models, such as the radial spreading, path loss, partial reflection and transmission of the backscattered electromagnetic waves from the tumor cell. The effects of the system noise and the noise from the inhomogeneity of the tissue to the reconstruction algorithm are modeled as well. The characteristics of the reconstructed images of the tumor using the proposed model are compared with those from the confocal microwave imaging.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.105-113
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• 2012

Biopsy is a type of histopathological examinations, in which a physician samples cells or tissues from a patient's suspicious lesion. Such a lesion frequently resides deep inside human body, and then a percutaneous biopsy is therefore performed using a thick needle with the assistance of medical imaging such as computed tomography(CT) and magnetic resonance imaging(MRI). Recently modern robotic technology is being introduced to percutaneous biopsy in order to reduce any possible human error and hazard on physicians caused by medical imaging. After medical imaging locates the exact location of lesion, an optimization algorithm plans the path for a biopsy needle. Subsequently, a robot system moves the biopsy needle to the lesion in accurate and safe way with the control of a practitioner or automatically. In this article, we try to look into the state-of-art of percutaneous biopsy using such robotic technology. We classified percutaneous biopsy robots by mechanical characteristics and by imaging technology. Then, advantage and disadvantage of each class type are described as well as the basic description, and a few representative designs for each type are introduced. Current research issues of robotized percutaneous biopsy are subjectively selected for the readers' convenience. We emphasize the basic technology of actuator and sensors compatible with imaging technology to conclude this review.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.938-940
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• 2014

This paper discusses a coherence-gated three-dimensional imaging system based on photorefractive holography, which was applied to imaging through turbid media with a view to developing biomedical instrumentation. A rapid response photorefractive device doped with 2,4,7-trinitro-9-fluorenylidene malononitrile was used to generate the hologram grating. The estimated depth resolution was $20{\mu}m$, which corresponds to the coherence length of the light source. In this coherence imaging system, tomographic imaging of a 3-dimensional object composed of a $50{\mu}m$ thick cylindrical layer was achieved. The proposed coherence imaging system using an organic photorefractive material can be used as an optical tomography system for biological applications.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.243-250
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• 1998

Reconstruction aspects of spiral scan imaging for ultra fast magnetic resonance imagine(MRI) have been investigated with polar and rectangular coordinates-based reconstruction. For the reconstruction of the spiral scan imaging, acquired data in spiral trjectory should be converted to polar or rectangular grids, where interpolation techniques are used. Various reconstruction algorithms for spiral scan imaging are tested, and reconstructed image qualities are compared with computed phantom. An improved reconstruction algorithm with dc-offset correction in projection domain is proposed, which provides the best reconstructed image quality from the simulation. Image artifact with existing algorithms is completely removed with the proposed method.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.165-172
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• 1999

An enhancement technique for phase dependent image contrast in MRI(Manetic Resonance Imaging) is proposed. Because the method can enhance inherent phase contrast it is suited for susceptibility imaging and flow imaging where intravoxel phase is a source of image contrast. In this paper, applying external phase in the voxel enhances phase contrast. The external phase is generated by a tailored RF pulse so that one can control the phase contrast and even produces phase only contrast. Signal intensity due to both inherent phase and external phase is analyzed and the proposed technique is applied to a susceptibility effect only imaging and a flow effect only imaging. To verify the proposed technique, computer simulations are performed and their results are given.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.117-124
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• 2006

Recently, active research has been going on to measure the elastic modulus of human soft tissue with medical ultrasound imaging systems for the purpose of diagnosing cancers or tumors which have been difficult to detect with conventional B-mode imaging techniques. In this paper, a real-time ultrasonic elasticity imaging system is implemented in software on a Pentium processor-based ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system. Soft tissue is subjected to external vibration, and the resulting tissue displacements change the phase of received echoes, which is in turn used to estimate tissue elasticity. It was confirmed from experiment with a phantom that the implemented elasticity imaging system could differentiate between soft and hard regions, where the latter is twice harder than the former, while operating at an adequate frame rate of 20 frames/s.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.116-124
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• 2021

It is important to differentiate between the target tissue (or organ) and the rest of the tissue before incision during surgery. And when it is necessary to preserve the differentiated tissues, the blood vessels connected to the tissue must be preserved together. Various non-invasive medical imaging methods have been developed for this purpose. We aimed to develop a medical imaging system that can simultaneously apply fluorescence imaging using indocyanine green (ICG) and laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) using laser speckle patterns. We designed to collect images directed to the two cameras on a co-axial optical path and to compensate equal optical path length for two optical designs. The light source used for fluorescence and LSCI the same 785 nm wavelength. This system outputs real-time images and is designed to intuitively distinguish target tissues or blood vessels. This system outputs LSCI images up to 37 fps through parallel processing. Fluorescence for ICG and blood flow in animal models were observed throughout the experiment.