• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.157-163
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• 2008

Retinal prosthesis is regarded as the most feasible method for the blind caused by retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration. One of the prerequisites for the success of retinal prosthesis is the optimization of the electrical stimuli applied through the prosthesis. Since electrical characteristics of degenerate retina are expected to differ from those of normal retina, we investigated differences of the retinal waveforms in normal and degenerate retina to provide a guideline for the optimization of electrical stimulation for the upcoming prosthesis. After isolation of retina, retinal patch was attached with the ganglion cell side facing the surface of microelectrode arrays (MEA). $8{\times}8$ grid layout MEA (electrode diameter: $30{\mu}m$, electrode spacing: $200{\mu}m$, and impedance: 50 $k{\Omega}$ at 1 kHz) was used to record in-vitro retinal ganglion cell activity. In normal mice (C57BL/6J strain) of postnatal day 28, only short duration (<2 ms) retinal spikes were recorded. In rd/rd mice (C3H/HeJ strain), besides normal spikes, waveform with longer duration (~100 ms), the slow wave component was recorded. We attempted to understand the mechanism of this slow wave component in degenerate retina using various synaptic blockers. We suggest that stronger glutamatergic input from bipolar cell to the ganglion cell in rd/rd mouse than normal mouse contributes the most to this slow wave component. Out of many degenerative changes, we favor elimination of the inhibitory horizontal input to bipolar cells as a main contributor for a relatively stronger input from bipolar cell to ganglion cell in rd/rd mouse.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.67-76
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• 1997

We studied optical behavior of scintillation light generated in NaI(TI) crystal using Monte Carlo simulation method. The simulation was performed for the model of NaI(TI) scintillator (size: 60 mm ${\times}$ 60 mm ${\times}$ 6 mm) using an optical tracking code. The sensitivity as a function of surface treatment (Ground, Polished, Metal-0.95RC, Polished-0.98RC, Painted- 0.98RC) of the incident surface of the scintillator was compared. The effects of NaI(TI) scintillator thickness and the refractive index of light guide optically coupling between the NaI(TI) scintillator and photomultiplier tube (PMT) were simulated. We also evaluated intrinsic position resolution of the system by calculating the spread of scintillation light generated. The sensitivities of the system having the surface treatment of Ground, Polished, Metal-0.95RC, Polished-0.98RC and Painted-0.98RC were 70.9％, 73.9％, 78.6％, 80.1％ and 85.2％, respectively, and the surface treatment of Painted-0.98RC allowed the highest sensitivity. As increasing the thickness of scintillation crystal and light guide, the sensitivity of the system was decreased. As the refractive index of light guide increases, the sensitivity was increased. The intrinsic position resolution of the system was estimated to be 1.2 mm in horizontal and vertical directions. In this study, the performance of NaI(TI)-PMT detector system was evaluated using Monte Carlo simulation. Based on the results, we concluded that the NaI(TI)-PMT detector array is a favorable configuration for small gamma camera imaging breast tumor using Tc-99m labeled radiopharmaceuticals.