• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.161-170
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• 1999

System performances in terms of image quality between an amorphous silicon DR system and a conventional film-screen system were evaluated. Various aspects of image quality MTF (modulation transfer function), NPS (noise power spectrum), SNR(signal-to-noise ratio) and contrast were measured and calculated. The MTF of the DR system was comparable to the film-screen systems. The noise was mainly dominated by the quantum mottle in both systems and the electronic noise was found in the DR system. The contrast of the DR system was better than the film-screen systems by virtue of high sensitivity and image processing. Compared to the film-screen systems in general radiography, the DR system had similar resolution and showed better contrast with the same exposure condition after contrast manipulation. The results of this study provide some useful information about the performance of the DR system in connection with medical applications.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.84-89
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to compare radiation dose and image quality between low-dose (LDP) and standard-dose protocol (SDP). LDP (120 kVp, 30 mAs, 2-mm thickness) and SDP (120 kVp, 180 mAs, 1.2-mm thickness) images obtained from 61 subjects were retrospectively evaluated at level of carina bifurcation, using multi-detector CT (Brilliance 16, Philips Medical Systems). Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were calculated at ascending aorta and infraspinatus muscle, from CT number and back-ground noise. Radiation dose from two protocols measured at 5-point using acrylic-phantom, and CT number and noise measured at 4-point using water-phantom. All statistical analysis were performed using SPSS 19.0 program. LDP images showed significantly more noise and a significantly lower SNR and CNR than did SDP images at ascending aorta and infraspinatus muscle. Noise, SNR and CNR were significantly correlated with body mass index (p<0.001). Radiation dose, SNR and CNR from phantom were significant differences between two protocols. LDP showed a significant reduction of radiation dose with a significant change in SNR and CNR compared with SDP. Therefore, exposure dose on LDP in clinical applications needs resetting highly more considering image quality.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.365-371
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• 2014

The aim of this study was to evaluate the utility of 3-D images by comparing and analyzing reconstructed 3-D images from fast spin echo images of MRI cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) images using maximum intensity projection (MIP) with the subtraction images derived from dynamic tests of magnetic resonance mammography. The study targeted 20 patients histologically diagnosed with pancreaticobiliary duct disease and 20 patients showing pancreaticobiliary duct diseases, where dynamic breast MR (magnetic resonance) images, fast spin echo imaged of pancreaticobiliary duct, and 3-D reconstitution images using a 1.5T MR scanner and 3.0T MR scanner were taken. As a result of the study, the signal-to-noise ratio in the subtracted breast image before and after administering the contrast agent and in the reconstructed 3-D breast image showed a high ratio in the reconstructed image of lesional tissue, relevant tissue, and fat tissue. However, no statistically meaningful differences were found in the contrast-to-noise ratio of the two images. In the case of the MRCP image, no differences were found in the ratios of the fast spin echo image and reconstructed 3-D image.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.619-625
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• 2017

The sudy was intended to evaluate the optimal equipment selection by quantitatively assessing the SNR(signal to noise ratio) and CNR(contrast to noise ratio) on the abdominal organ. This study performed on 1.5 T and 3.0 T MRI units focusing on HASTE, HASTE(f/s) and FFE(in of phase), FFE(out of phase) without using the contrast medium(Gadolinium). The data analysis was performed by randomly selecting on 1.5 T and 3.0 T abdominal MRI images. As a results, SNR and CNR values of 3.0 T is higher than 1.5 T at liver, kidney and spleen(p<0.05). Stomach, abdominal fat and pancreas was obtained a higher value at 1.5 T(p<0.05). On conclusion, the organs of outer part in the body showed generally a high value at 3.0 T, and the organs of inner part in the body including the gas showed a high value at 3.0 T because of a large difference on magnetic susceptibility.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.360-362
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• 2002

Myocardial tagging technique such as spatial modulation of magnetization (SPAMM) allows the study of myocardial motion with high accuracy. Tagging contrast of such a tagging images can affect to the accuracy of the estimation of tag intersection in order to analyze the myocardial motion. Tagging contrast can be affected by tagline spacing. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between tagline spacing of SPAMM image and tagging contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) experimentally. One healthy volunteer was undergone electrocardiographically triggered MR imaging with SPAMM-based tagging pulse sequence at a 1.5T MR scanner (Gyroscan Intera, Philips Medical System, Netherland). Horizontally modulated stripe patterns were imposed with a range from 3.6mm to 9.6mm of tagline spacing. Images of the left ventricle (LV) wall were acquired at the mid-ventricle level during cardiac cycle with FEEPI (TR/TE/FA=5.8/2.2/10). Tagging CNR for each image was calculated with a software which developed in our group. During contraction, tagging CNR was more rapidly decreased in case of short tagline spacing than in case of long tagline spacing. In the same heart phase, CNR was increased corresponding with tag line spacing. Especially, at the fully contracted heart phase, CNR was more rapidly increased than the other heart phases as a function of tagline spacing.

• Korean Journal of Digital Imaging in Medicine
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.127-132
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• 2010

In this study, the correlation among the changes of Modulation Transfer Function(MTF) in the noise and high-contrast resolution and the change of Contrast to noise ratio(CNR) in the low-contrast resolution will be examined to investigate the estimation of image quality according to the type of algorithms. The image data obtained by scanning American Association of Physicists in Medicine(AAPM) phantom was applied to each algorithm and the exposure condition of 120 kVp, 250 mAs, and then the CT number and noise were measured. The MTF curved line of the high-contrast resolution was calculated with Point Spread Function(PSF) by using the analysis program by Philips, resulting in 0.5 MTF, 0.1 MTF and 0.02 MTF respectively. The low-contrast resolution was calculated with CNR and the uniformity was measured to each algorithm. Since the measurement value for the uniformity of the equipment was below ${\pm}$ 5 HU, which is the criterion figure, it was found to belong to the normal range. As the algorithm got closer from soft to edge, the standard deviation of CT number increased, which indicates that the noise increased as well. As for MTF, 0.5 MTF, 0.1 MTF and 0.02 MTF were all sharp algorithms, and as the algorithm got closer from soft to edge, it was possible to distinguish more clearly with the naked eye. On the other hand, CNR gradually decreased, because the difference between the contrast hole CT number and the acrylic CT number was the same while the noise of hole increased.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.393-400
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to suggest a method to reduce the dose by Analyzing the dose area product (DAP) and image quality according to the change of tube current using NEMA Phantom. The spatial resolution and low contrast resolution were used as evaluation criteria in addition to signal to noise ratio (SNR) and contrast to noise ratio (CNR), which are important image quality parameters of intervention. Tube voltage was fixed at 80 kVp and the amount of tube current was changed to 20, 30, 40, and 50 mAs, and the dose area product and image quality were compared and analyzed. As a result, the dose area product increased from $1066mGycm^2$ to $6160mGycm^2$ to 6 times as the condition increased, while the spatial resolution and low contrast resolution were higher than 20 mAs and 30 mAs, Spatial resolution and low contrast resolution were observed below the evaluation criteria. In addition, the SNR and CNR increased up to 30 mAs, slightly increased at 40 mAs, but not significantly different from the previous one, and decreased at 50 mAs. As a result, the exposure dose significantly increased due to overexposure of the test conditions and the image quality deteriorated in all areas of spatial resolution, low contrast resolution, SNR and CNR.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.1205-1211
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• 2012

Recently, the evaluating method of the bone mineral density (BMD) in X-ray absorptiometry image has been studied for the early diagnosis of osteoporosis which is known as a metabolic disease. The BMD, in general, is evaluated by calculating pixel intensity in the bone segmented regions. Accurate bone region extraction is extremely crucial for the BMD evaluation. So, a X-Ray image enhancement is needed to get precise bone segmentation. In this paper, we propose an image enhancement method of X-ray image having multiple noise based sparse representation. To evaluate the performance of proposed method, we employ the contrast to noise ratio (CNR) metric and cut-view graphs visualizing image enhancement performance. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the BayesShrink noise reduction methods and the previous noise reduction method in sparse representation with general noise model.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.150-156
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• 2008

An applied technique of contrast enhancement for X-ray image is proposed which is based on combined enhancement of scaling and wavelet coefficients in discrete wavelet transform space. Conventional contrast enhancement methods such as contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE), multi-scale image contrast amplification (MUSICA) and gamma correction were applied on scaling coefficients to enhance the contrast of an original. In order to enhance the detail as well as reduce the blurring caused by up scaling of contrast modified scale coefficients from lower resolution, the sigmoid manipulation function was used to manipulate wavelet coefficients. The contrast detail mammography (CDMAM) phantom was imaged and processed to measure the image line profile of results and contrast to noise ratio (CNR) comparatively. The proposed technique produced better results than direct application of various contrast enhancement methods on image itself. The proposed method can enhance contrast, and also suppress the amplification of noise components in a single process. It could be useful for various applications in medical, industrial and graphical images where contrast and detail are of importance.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.118-126
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• 2004

The modified Wiener filtering method is proposed for effective noise suppression in edge region of images corrupted by additive white gaussian noise. Although the pixels classified as a edge region in the conventional Wiener filter have lots of noise components, the conventional Wiener filter cannot remove noise effectively due to the preserving of edges. To reduce noise well in edge region, we modify filter coefficients of the conventional Wiener filter. The modified filter coefficients increase in noise suppression effect in edge region, while they preserve edges for strong edge region. From simulation (256${\times}$256 size, 256 graylevel images) filtered images by the proposed method show much improved subjective image quality with higher peak signal-to-noise ratio compared to those by the conventional Wiener filtering.