• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.879-887
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to establish a physiological injection protocol according to body weight, in order to minimize amount of contrast medium and optimize contrast enhancement in pediatric patients performing thoracic CT examinations. The 80 pediatric patients under the age of 10 were studied. Intravenous contrast material containing 300 mgI/ml was used. The group A injected with a capacity of 1.5 times its weight, and groups B, C and D added 5 to 15 ml of normal saline with a 10% decrease in each. The physiologic model which can be calculated by weight about amount of injection of contrast medium and normal saline, flow rate and delay time were applied. To assess image quality, measured average HU value and SNR of superior vena cava, pulmonary artery, ascending and descending aorta, right and left atrium, right and left ventricle. CT numbers of subclavian vein and superior vena cava were compared to identify the effects of reducing artifacts due to normal saline. Comparing SNR according to the contrast medium injection protocol, significant differences were found in superior vena cava and pulmonary artery, descending aorta, right and left ventricle, and CT numbers showed significant differences in all organs. In particular, B group with a 10% decrease in contrast medium and an additional injection of saline showed a low degree of contrast enhancement in groups with a decrease of more than 20%. In addition, the group injected with normal saline greatly reduced contrast enhancement of subclavian vein and superior vena cava, and the beam hardening artifact by contrast medium was significantly attenuated. In conclusion, the application of physiological protocol for injection of contrast medium in pediatric thoracic CT examinations was able to reduce artifacts by contrast medium, prevent unnecessary use of contrast medium and improve the effect of contrast enhancement.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
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• 1999.11a
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• pp.44-44
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• 1999

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.944-946
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• 2023

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.183-189
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• 2014

Purpose : Intravenous contrast medium is a substance used to enhance the contrast of normal tissues or malignant tissues within the body. For this reason, intravenous contrast media have been extensively used form treatment-planning CT. However, when the patient is receiving proton therapy, there is no contrast medium in that moment. In this study, evaluate the influence of intravenous contrast medium on proton range and Spread-Out Bragg peak(SOBP) in Treatment Planning System(TPS). Materials and Methods : Hounsfield Unit(HU) value were measured by 20 liver cancer patients with phase change. and evaluate the proton range and SOBP on 5 liver proton treatment plan. By using the hand made water phantom measure the proton range and SOBP on proton treatment plan with changing HU and Depth. Results : Changing value(Pre contrast, Arterial phase, Portal phase) in liver cancer patient were ($58{\pm}5.7$, $75{\pm}9.5$, $117{\pm}14.6$ for liver tissue) and ($40{\pm}6.1$, $279{\pm}49.0$, $154{\pm}22.8$ for aorta), respectively. The mean difference of range was 2.5mm and SOBP was 1.4mm according to HU change. In phantom study, proton range was shorter and SOBP was narrowed with increasing HU. Conclusion : We verify that HU change lead to range and SOBP change in TPS. Additional study is required to verify that change of HU make range and SOBP be changed in actual substance.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.496-508
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• 2017

In this paper, we propose a Tone Mapping Operator (TMO) that preserves global contrast and precisely preserves boundary information. In order to reconstruct a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image to a Low Dynamic Range (LDR) display by using Threshold value vs. Intensity value (TVI) based on Human Visual System (HVS) and contrast value. As a result, the global contrast of the image can be preserved. In addition, by combining the boundary information detected using Guided Image Filtering (GIF) and the detected boundary information using the spatial masking of the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) model, And improved the perceived image quality of the output image. The conventional TMOs are classified into Global Tone Mapping (GTM) and Local Tone Mapping (LTM). GTM preserves global contrast, has the advantages of simple implementation and fast execution time, but it has a disadvantage in that the boundary information of the image is lost and the regional contrast is not preserved. On the other hand, the LTM preserves the local contrast and boundary information of the image well, but some areas are expressed unnatural like the occurrence of the halo artifact phenomenon in the boundary region, and the calculation complexity is higher than that of GTM. In this paper, we propose TMO which preserves global contrast and combines the merits of GTM and LTM to preserve boundary information of images. Experimental results show that the proposed tone mapping technique has superior performance in terms of cognitive quality.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.47-59
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• 1979

In order to study the morphologic changes of the unfixed odontoblasts suspended in phenol solution of several different concentrations, the author carried out the extraction of lower incisor of S-D strain rats to collect the odontoblasts, and the cells obtained were suspended immediately in saline solution. After observing the odontoblasts in fresh state, the saline solution was substituted with 0.125%, 0.25% 0.5%, 1% and 2% diluted phenol solutions. The morphologic changes were examined with phase contrast microscope at intervals of 10, 30, and 60 minutes. The results were as follows: 1. In saline solution the odontoblast showed cytoplasmic swelling, slender cytoplasmic process, thick rim nuclear membrane with increased dark contrast, and prominent nucleoli and chromatin granules with lapse of time intervals. In accordance with time intervals, blisters appeared in the supranuclear zone and increased its size and moved outward of the cytoplasmic membrane resulting detachment from the cell membrane. The phase dark cytoplasmic granules were increased in its dark contrast and in its size. 2. In 0.125% and 0.25% phenol solution, the odontoblasts and its nucleus shrunk immeidately and its contrast of cellular components was increased. With the lapse of time, the phase-dark granules in cytoplasm were aggregated, and several blisters were formed in and out of the cells. The outline of cytoplasmic membrane was also obscured. 3. In 0.5% phenol solution, the necleus shrunk at once, but soon after it revealed karyolysis accompanying dark contrast of neclear components such as nuclear membrane, nucleoli, and chromatin granules. On the contrary, the cytoplasmic granules showed aggregation and increased dark contrast, small and large blisters were formed in and out of the odontblasts and the outline of cytoplasmic membrane became obscured. 4. In 1% phenol solution, it showed shrinkage of odontblasts and its nuclei with thick rim nuclear membrane, aggregation of chromatin granules and occasional karyorrhexis. The dark contrast of cytoplasmic granules was increased and aggregated each other. But the blister formation could not be found. 5. In 2% phenol solution, it showed the shrinkage of odontoblasts and pyknotic nuclei with increased dark contrast of nucleoli and chromatin granules. The number of cytoplasmic granules was decreased by aggregation. But the blister formation could not be found as in 1% phenol solution.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.13B no.4 s.107
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• pp.471-478
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• 2006

In this paper, two color contrast evaluation algorithms, W3C and NSSC algorithms are compared and investigated to select proper criteria of the color contrast of text-background color combinations in web documents. The relationship between the color contrast defined by existing formula and the readability rating is not perfect and there is quite a bit of variance, in particular, there is some substantial outlier. I modify the NSSC algorithm to apply all colors and compare the two algorithms to apply same color combinations of web safe colors. A new algorithm considering color temperature feeling as a component of the color contrast is proposed and implemented. As the results of this study, the existing two algorithms are not contradictory to each other, 82% of all color combinations of web safe colors are not proper combinations according to W3C guide which provide severe restriction to select colors in web documents compared to NSSC algorithm. Experimental test shows proposed algorithm is superior to the W3C algorithm with respect to the linearity of relationship between color contrast and readability rating. It means a color temperature feeling is an effective component of a color contrast. But to determine best contribution ratio of the color temperature feeling, further study is required and it is related to Hangul font style and size. The more popular a mobile color display is used, the more important accessibility factor a color contrast will be.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.141-147
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• 2015

The contrast of a display is generally evaluated by using the ratio of the minimum luminance to the maximum luminance of the display. However, this contrast ratio is not matched with perceived contrast because it uses only physical characteristic of display without considering human perceptual characteristics. In this paper, the proposed contrast measure that considers perceptually discriminable brightness within the range of display brightness is suggested. First, the range between the minimum and maximum brightness of display in CIECAM02 color space is calculated to measure the length of perceived brightness for the display. Next, brightness ranges which are perceptually same at each brightness level are determined by applying Weber-Fechner ratio and then, the number of brightness values within each brightness range is counted. Finally, perceptually discriminable brightness is defined as the sum of ratio between the number of brightness values in each brightness range and the perceptual contrast length of the display. In the experiments, preference test using various displays with random brightness patches is performed to evaluate perceived contrast. As a result, the proposed measure is more consistent with human perception than the previous contrast measures.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.11-16
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• 2007

In this study, we have performed contrast-detail analysis for an amorphous selenium(a-Se) based digital X-ray imaging system by using a contrast-detail phantom(CDRAD 2.0) to test its low contrast performance. The X-ray imaging system utilizes an 500-mm-thick a-Se semiconductor X-ray absorber coated over an amorphous silicon(a-Si) TFT(thin-film transistor) detector matrix with a $139mm{\times}139mm$ pixel size and a $46.7cm{\times}46.7cm$ active area. In the measurement of contrast-detail curves we first acquired X-ray images of the CDRAD 2.0 phantom at given test conditions(i.e., 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 kVp, and 16 mA.s), and then evaluated the contrast-detail characteristics of the imaging system from each phantom image by using an image quality factor called the image-quality-figure-inverse(IQFinv). The IQFinv values for the imaging system gradually improved with the photon fluence, indicating the improvement of image visibility: 24.4, 35.3, 39.2, 41.5, and 43.4 at photon fluences of $1.8{\times}105$, $5.9{\times}105$, $11.3{\times}105$, $19.4{\times}105$, and $29.4{\times}105$ photons/$mm^2$, respectively.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.173-182
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• 1999

Contrast-enhanced CT has an important role in assessing liver lesions, the optimal protocol to get most effective result is not clear. The mein goal when deciding injention protocol is to optimize lesion detectability with rapid scanning when lesion to liver contrast is maximum. For this purpose, we developed a physiological model of the contrast medium enhancement based on the compartment modeling and pharmacokinetics. Blood supply to liver is achieved in two paths. This dual supply characteristic distinguishes the CT enhancement of liver from that of the other organs. The first path is by hepatic artery and to second, by portal vein. However, it is assumed that only gepatic artery can supply blood to hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) compartment, thus, the difference of contrast enhancement is resulted between normal liver tissue and hepatic tumor. By solving differential equations for each compartment simultaneously using the computer program Matlab, CT contrast-enhancement curves were simulated. The simulated enhancement curves for aortic, hepatic, portal vein, and HCC compartments were compared with the mean enhancement curves from 24 patients exposed to the same protocols as the simulation. These enhancement curves showed a good agreement. Furthermore, we simulated lesion-to-liver curves for various injection protocols, and the effects were analyzed. The variables to be considered in the injection protocol were injection rate, dose, and concentration of contrast material. These data may help to optimize scanning protocols for better diagnosis.