• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
• /
• 2003.10a
• /
• pp.40-40
• /
• 2003

The purpose of this study was to characterize focal hepatic lesions through pre and post ferucarbotran-enhanced T2 and T2＊-weighted imaging and to help differentiate benign and malignant lesions 대상 및 방법： Consecutive 34 patients with 52 hepatic lesions underwent MRI before and after intravenous bolus injection of ferucarbotran (Resovist Sobering, Berlin, Germany) for evaluation of focal hepatic lesions. Lesions included hemangiomas (n=17), metastases (n=12), cysts (n=10), hepatocellular carcinomas (n=8), dysplastic nodules (n=4), and focal fat deposit (n=1). T2-weighted fast spin echo (TR/TE： 4060/138) and gradient echo T2＊-weighted images(TR/TE： 140/5.3, FA = 90) were obtained according to the institutional routine imaging protocol. Lesional signal-intensity and lesion-to-liver contrast changes were measured by contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) from region of interest.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.573-579
• /
• 2023

This study compares dose difference between the presence or absence of grid in Chest PA radiography using auto exposure control and compares image quality among presence, absence or virtual grid, and proposes a new clinically useful grid combination for chest radiography. The human body phantom was placed Chest PA position and the dosimeter was placed at T6. The same irradiation conditions and field size were applied. 30 images were obtained in the state in which grid was applied and in the state in which grid was not applied, and an additional 30 images in which the virtual grid was applied to the image without the grid were obtained. Radiation dose was presented to entrance surface dose. The image quality was analyzed by comparing the signal-to-noise and contrast-to-noise ratio. ESD decreased by 48% when the grid was not used, compared to when the grid was used. SNR and CNR increased by 32% and 30% compared to grid use when grid was not used, respectively. In the case of using the virtual grid, it increased by 18% and 16% respectively, compared to the case of using the grid. As a result of this study, it is believed that when using a virtual grid instead of a grid, the quality of the image can be maintained while reducing the patient dose.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartA
• /
• v.8A no.4
• /
• pp.499-502
• /
• 2001

Fractal image coding suffers from the long search time of domain pool although it provides many properties including the high compression ratio. We find that the normalized variance of a block is independent of contrast, brightness. Using this observation, we introduce a self similar block searching method employing the d-dimensional nearest neighbor searching. This method takes Ο(log/N) time for searching the self similar domain blocks for each range block where N is the number of domain blocks. PSNR (Peak Signal Noise Ratio) of this method is similar to that of the full search method that requires Ο(N) time for each range block. Moreover, the image quality of this method is independent of the number of edges in the image.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• /
• v.1 no.1
• /
• pp.130-134
• /
• 1997

Purpose: To analyze contrast-enhancement pattern of stomach cancer on dynamic MRI and to verify the efficacy of intravenous contrast agent in the evaluation of stomach cancer. Materials and Methods: Twelve patients with proven stomach cancer underwent dynamic MRI. By using l.OT scanner, we obtained precontrast FLASH images, and 30, 60, 90 second delay FLASH images after intravenous contrast injection. All patients ingested one liter of water and had intramuscular injection of Buscopan just before MR study. For quantitative analysis we measured signal to noise ratio (SiN) of stomach cancer on each image, and signal difference to noise ratio (SD/N) between cancer and intraluminal fluid, cancer and the pancreas. For qualitative analysis two radiologists evaluated lesion conspicuity on each image by grading system(grade 0, 1, 2, 3: poor, fair, good, excellent). Results: SiN of stomach cancer increased gradually by time(precontrast, 30, 60, 90 second delay: 38.7, 42.5, 57.4, 65.7). SD/N between cancer and intraluminal fluid significantly increased after contrast enhancement(l.24, 25.01, 39.30, 45.89). SD/Ns between cancer and the pancreas were 10.5, 9.33, 9.99, 10.66, respectively. In qualitative analysis, precontrast images were better than postcontrast images for delineation of stomach cancer. Postcontrast images showed clear endo-Iuminal side of stomach cancer, but outer margin of stomach cancer was more distinct on precontrast images. Conclusion: Precontrast MR images are better than postcontrast MR images in the depiction of stomach cancer. Intravenous contrast agent is not imperative in the evaluation of stomach cancer.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.37 no.4
• /
• pp.140-146
• /
• 2016

The ultrasound imaging in medical diagnosis has become a popular modality because of its safe, noninvasive, portable, relatively inexpensive, and provides a real-time image formation. However, usefulness of ultrasound imaging is at times limited due to the presence of signal-dependent noise like as speckle. Therefore, noise reduction is very important, as various types of noise generated limits the effectiveness of medical image diagnosis. This paper introduces a speckle noise reduce algorithm using total variation denoising (TVD) in Laplacian pyramid. With this method, speckle is removed by TVD of bandpass ultrasound images in Laplacian pyramid domain. For TVD in each pyramid layer, a ${\lambda}$ is selected by trial-and-error method. The visual comparison of despeckled 'in vivo' ultrasound images from pancreas shows that the proposed method could effectively preserve edges and detailed structures while thoroughly suppressing speckle. For a Simulated B-mode image, contrast-to-noise-ratio (CNR) and signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) were obtained like 4.65 dB and 14.11 dB, respectively. The results show that the proposed method can conduct better than some of the existing methods in terms of the CNR and the SNR.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.12 no.10
• /
• pp.5056-5078
• /
• 2018

In this work we propose a compression technique that makes use of linear and perceptually uniform CIE $La^*b^*$ color space in the JPEG image compression framework to improve its performance at lower bitrates. To generate quantization matrices suitable for the linear and perceptually uniform CIE $La^*b^*$ color space, a novel linear Contrast Sensitivity Function (CSF) is used. The compression performance in terms of Compression Ratio (CR) and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), is further improved by utilizing image dependent, variable and non-uniform image sub-blocks generated using a proposed histogram-based merging technique. Experimental results indicate that the proposed linear CSF based quantization technique yields, on an average, 8% increase in CR for the same reconstructed image quality in terms of PSNR as compared to the conventional YCbCr color space. The proposed scheme also outperforms JPEG in terms of CR by an average of 45.01% for the same reconstructed image quality.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.159-168
• /
• 2019

We examined the effect of Siemens ADMIRE (Advanced Modeled Iterative Reconstruction) on image quality by measuring changes in HU, noise, and SNR of background air, fat, muscle, and background signals on a chest CT scan. Experimental results show that as the ADMIRE Strength increases, the noise decreases and the signal increases, consequently the signal-to-noise ratio increases. ADMIRE can reduce noise by 28 ~ 61% compared to FBP, which is a conventional image reconstruction algorithm, and improves SNR by 16 ~ 100%.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.9 no.5
• /
• pp.307-314
• /
• 2015

This study was conducted in reducing the involuntary motion artifacts because of lungs and heart movements as well as the aliasing artifacts generated during the use of the reduced-FOV EPI technique while performing breast MRI. Performed on a total of 38 obesity female subjects who visited the clinic for pre-examination before surgery within the period from August 1 to November 30, 2014. The 3.0T MRI scanner equipped with a breast scanning coil. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were each used for the evaluation of the acquired images while an Paired T-test and Wilcoxon rank test were performed to check the statistical significance. The variation ratio rose by 15.69% with the additional application of a pre-saturation pulse in the lesion, by 13.72% near the lesion, and 20.63% in the fat and the contrast-to-noise ratio rose by 10.58% in and near the lesion and by 12.03% in the lesion and fat, respectively. there were increases of 22.05% and 21.42% at 0 and 1000 respectively in qulitative evaluation and growth of 16.10% in apparent diffusion coefficient. it showed a statistically significant result(p<0.05) in signal to noise ratio, contrast to noise ratio, diffusion slope coefficient and apparent diffusion coefficient. The involuntary movements artifacts that occur in the phase encoding direction and the aliasing artifacts are considered to be reduced to obtain the best image in the additional use of the pre-saturation pulse as DWI is acquired.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.14 no.5
• /
• pp.511-515
• /
• 2020

In this study, we evaluated image quality for new Gadolinium Aluminum Gallium Garnet (GAGG) scintillation material based on the Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission (GATE) simulation tool. The gamma camera detectors with GAGG and NaI scintillation were designed. In particular, we modeled modified body phantom by National Electrical Manufacturers Association International Electrotechnical Commission to evaluate the simulated images. To analysis the image performance, the contrast to noise ratio (CNR) and coefficient of variation (COV) were used by drawn the region of interests, respectively. Based on the CNR and COV results, the CNR value for GAGG material is higher approximately 17 % than NaI material. In addition, the COV value for GAGG material is lower approximately 17 % than NaI material. In conclusion, we confirmed the performnace of GAGG based gamma camera is useful to improve the image quality for the nuclear medicine instrumentation.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.13 no.9
• /
• pp.431-437
• /
• 2015

This convergence study analyzed the effectiveness of contrast agent reduction by normal saline solution dilution in the computed tomography of arteries of lower limb. 48 patients of 125 cc contrast agent and 30 patients of the same amount divided at a ratio of 7:3 for the contrast agent and normal saline solution were studied. The average attenuation coefficient(HU) and signal to noise ratio(SNR) of abdominal aorta, femoral artery, popliteal artery and posterior tibial artery at each image were evaluated quantitatively and the four criteria in the five point scale was conducted qualitatively by two radiologists and four radiological technologists. In the quantitative evaluation, both HU and SNR had high average score before dilation but there were no statistical significance by independent t-test(p>0.05). In the qualitative evaluation, there were a little differences in the average scores between 4.86~4.77 of original contrast agent and 4.83~4.67 of dilated contrast agent but there were no statistical significance(p>0.05). In the computed tomography of arteries of lower limb, the dilated contrast agent doesn't influence image quality and reduces overall contrast agent and lowers iodine content per unit of molecular therefore will contribute to decrease side effect of contrast agent.