• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.123-128
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• 2018

Recently, the use of contrast agents has been increasing as a broader range of tests and dynamic tests have become common due to the development of equipment and imaging techniques such as Multi-Detector CT. However, the side effects of using contrast agents have been reduced by the development of non-ionic contrast agents, but they are still occurring often. The purpose of this study was to propose a method to minimize the side effect of contrast agent by using the amount of contrast agent injected to the brain angiography test to suppress excessive use of contrast agent and analyze the amount of contrast agent. Patients who were prescribed Brain Angiography due to cerebrovascular disease, According to the results of the comparison of the results obtained by dividing into 4 groups of 10ml each according to the amount of contrast medium injected with contrast agent according to the BMI of the patient, BA and SNR were not different between groups, and even if the amount of contrast injection was reduced, there was no problem in the evaluation of CT angiography through 3D reconstruction. This result shows that even if the contrast medium is injected into the blood vessels of the patient first and then the contrast medium is used as the physiological saline solution, the contrast medium is reduced by 40% it can be expected to minimize.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.593-598
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• 2016

In order to reduce the amount of noise component in X-ray imaging system, various reduction techniques were frequently used in the field of diagnostic imaging. Although the previous techniques -such as median, Wiener filters and Anscombe noise reduction technique - were able to reduce the noise, the edge information was still damaged. In order to cope with this problem, total variation (TV) noise reduction technique has been developed and researched. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the image quality using normalized noise power spectrum (NNPS) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) through simulations and experiments with respect to the above-mentioned noise reduction techniques. As a result, not only lowest NNPS value but also highest CNR values were acquired using a TV noise reduction technique. In conclusion, the results demonstrated that TV noise reduction technique is proved as the most practical method to ensure accurate denoising in X-ray imaging system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.27-36
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• 2024

In this study, When acquisition thyroid scintigraphy images, a parallel hole collimator was applied, and the difference from the pinhole collimator was quantitatively analyzed under each image acquisition condition. Visual size, resolution, sensitivity, signal to noise ratio (SNR), and contrast to noise ratio (CNR) were evaluated using thyroid phantom and point source. When comparing visual size, it was confirmed that an image similar to the size of the pinhole collimator could be obtained only when a magnification ratio of about 2.00 to 2.09 times when applying a parallel hole collimator. There was no tendency in FWHM(mm) measurement using a point source, and sensitivity was high in the parallel hole collimator. SNR and CNR were high when using a low magnification ratio, matrix size of 128×128, and a parallel hole collimator. In images of similar size to the naked eye, when the matrix size was the same, both SNR and CNR were high in the pinhole collimator. Therefore, when performing a thyroid scintigraphy test, if appropriate conditions are set according to the situation of each hospital and a parallel hole collimator is applied, it can be a good option in terms of equipment utilization and work efficiency.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.553-558
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• 2022

The purpose of this work was a simulation study to evaluate the virtual monochromatic (VM) image quality of blood vessels compared to the monochromatic image. Dual-energy images were obtained based on the linear attenuation coefficients of five materials at 50 keV and 80 keV at low- and high-energies, respectively. A weighting factor is required to synthesize the VM image, and the liver and bone were used as basis materials to obtain the weighting factor. VM images were synthesized at energies ranging from 30 keV to 100 keV. Image quality was evaluated by Contrast to noise ratio (CNR) and noise by setting calcium and contrast medium as signals and blood as background. According to the results, the energies with the maximum CNR were 50 keV and 60 keV for calcium and contrast medium, respectively. The energies showing the minimum noise were 70 keV, 70 keV, and 60 keV in calcium, iodine contrast medium, and blood, respectively. The VM image can contribute to the improvement of diagnostic performance in CT examination because it can implement an image at the optimal energy that minimize noise and maximize CNR.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.113-120
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• 1997

This paper presents an optimal design for the SPECT reconstruction filter, based on a physical limit of SPECT lesion detection capability. To increase the performance of the filter on lesion detectability, the filter design was focused on increasing the local SyW ratio of a threshold lesion, that was determined by minimum detectable lesion size (MDU) from SPECT lesion detectabllity contrast-detail curve. The proposed filter showed flexible window characteristics of resolution recovery and noise smoothing for MDLSs in the resolution-limited and photon-limited regions, respectively, compennting for the relative impact of the main limitation factors on threshold detectability. The simulated results showed good adaptability of the proposed filter to the changes in physical parameters of photon counts, object contrast, and detector system resolution.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.115-122
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• 2018

We aims to perform comparative analysis on the dose area and image qualities varying on the slice thickness when using Automatic Exposure Controller (AEC) and manual exposure; thus, it wants to suggest a measure to reduce exposure dose by setting the optimal examination condition for each slice thickness. The method was to set the thickness as Thin, Normal, and Heavy adult and evaluate the dose area, spatial resolution, low contrast resolution, Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and Contrast to Noise Ratio (CNR) according to each slice thickness by using the AEC and the manual exposure controller. The dose area according to each slice thickness all increased both when using the AEC and the manual exposure. However, the manual exposure showed lower dose area product than the AEC. Spatial resolutions and low contrast resolutions were all observed to be higher than the evaluation standard. Also, the SNR and CNR of each thickness all increased when using the AEC. When using the manual exposure, SNR and CNR increased in all cases other than the Heavy Adult. Consequently, the Thin and Normal Adult showed dose reduction about 2 times when using the manual exposure controller, while ensuring the image quality. Heavy adult was able to maintain good image quality by using AEC.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.12 no.7
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• pp.845-852
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• 2018

This study aimed to investigate the difference of X-ray exposure by comparing and analyzing absorbed dose according to changes in the number of frames in coronary angiography, also depending whether the zoom mode is FOV enlargement or Zoom Live. Moreover, for appropriate frame selection measures for examination, including the effect of frame change on the image quality, were sought by measuring the noise strength expressed by the standard deviation (SD), the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and contrast to noise ratio (CNR). The study was conducted with an anthropomorphic phantom on an angio-system. The linear relationship between the frame rate and the radiation dose was evident. On the contrary, the indices of image quality (SD, SNR, and CNR) were almost constant irrespective of the number of frames. The difference depending on the zoom mode was not statistically significant for DAP, air kerma, and SD (p > 0.05). However, SNR and CNR were statistically different between FOV enlargement and Zoom Live. In conclusion, since the image quality was not degraded significantly with the decreasing frame rate from 30, 15, to 7.5 f/s and the radiation dose evidently decreases in almost exactly linear proportion to the decreasing frame rate, the number of frames per second needs to be maintained as low as reasonably achievable. As for the dependence on the zooming mode, the Live Zoom mode showed statistically significant improvement in the image quality indices of SNR and CNR and it justifies active use of the Live Zoom mode which enables real-time image enlargment without additional radiation dose.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.1025-1031
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• 2023

We aimed to evaluate the radiation dose and image quality by changing the Scout view voltage in low-dose chest CT (LDCT) and applying scan parameters such as AEC (auto exposure control) and ASIR (adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction) to find the optimal protocol. Scout view voltage was varied at 80, 100, 120, 140 kV and after measuring the dose 5 times using the existing low-dose chest CT protocol, the appropriate kV was selected for the study using the Dose report provided by the equipment. After taking a basic LDCT shot at 120 kV, 30 mAs, ASIR 50% was applied to this condition. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were assessed by measuring Background noise (B/N). For dose comparison, CTDI_vol and DLP provided by the equipment were compared and analyzed using the formulas. The results indicated that the protocol of scout 140 + LDCT + ASIR 50 + AEC reduced radiation exposure and improved image quality compared to traditional LDCT, providing an optimal protocol. As demonstrated in the experiment, LDCT screenings for asymptomatic normal individuals are crucial, as they involve concerns over excessive radiation exposure per examination. Therefore, applying appropriate parameters is important, and it is expected to contribute positively to the public health in future LDCT based health screenings.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.23 no.12
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• pp.27-33
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• 2018

In this paper, we propose an efficient edge preserving smoothing filter for Infrared image that can reduce noise while preserving edge information. Infrared images suffer from low signal-to-noise ratio, low edge detail information and low contrast. So, detail enhancement and noise reduction play crucial roles in infrared image processing. We first apply a guided image filter as a local analysis. After the filtering process, we optimization globally using relativity of guided image filter. Our method outperforms the previous methods in removing the noise while preserving edge information and detail enhancement.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.439-443
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• 2019

To improve the noise characteristics, software-based noise reduction algorithms are widely used in cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) pixelated semiconductor gamma camera system. The purpose of this study was to develop an improved median filtering algorithm using a thresholding method for noise reduction in a CZT pixelated semiconductor gamma camera system. The gamma camera system simulated is a CZT pixelated semiconductor detector with a pixel-matched parallel-hole collimator and the spatial resolution phatnom was designed with the Geant4 Application for Tomography Emission (GATE). In addition, a noise reduction algorithm with a median filter using an improved thresholding method is developed and we applied our proposed algorithm to an acquired spatial resolution phantom image. According to the results, the proposed median filter improved the noise characteristics compared to a conventional median filter. In particular, the average for normalized noise power spectrum, contrast to noise ratio, and coefficient of variation results using the proposed median filter were 10, 1.11, and 1.19 times better than results using conventional median filter, respectively. In conclusion, our results show that the proposed median filter using improved the thresholding method results in high imaging performance when applied in a CZT semiconductor gamma camera system.