• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.45-55
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• 2005

Purpose : To evaluate the usefulness of the handmade patient immobilization device and to report the clinical results of it. Materials and methods : We made two fusion images and analyzed those images. One image is made with diagnostic MR image and CT image, the other with therapeutic planning MR image and CT image. With open head holder, we measured the skin dose and attenuation dose. Also, we made the planning CT couch plate with acrylic plate and styrofoam and compared artifact. Results : We could get more accurate fusion image when we use MR head holder(within 2mm error). The skin dose was reduced 2 times and the attenuation dose was reduced more than $20\%$ when open head holder used. The planning CT couch plate was more convenient than conventional board and reduced artifact remarkably. Conclusion : We could verify the localization point in the MR image which is taken with MR head holder. So we could fuse the image more accurately. The same method could be applied to PET and US image, if the alike immobilization device used. With open head holder, the skin dose and the attenuation dose was reduced. And those above devices could substitute for expensive foreign device, if those are manufactured adequately.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.375-385
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• 2016

Recently, several implantable hearing aids such as cochlear implant, middle ear implant, etc., which have a module receiving power and signal from outside the body, are frequently used to treat the hearing impaired patients. Most of implantable hearing aids are adopted permanent magnet pairs to couple between internal and external devices for the enhancement of power transmission. Generally, the internal device which containing the magnet in the center of receiving coil is implanted under the skin of human temporal bone. In case of MRI scanning of a patient with the implantable hearing aid, however, homogeneous magnetic fields of the MRI might be interfered by the implanted magnet. For the above reasons, the MR image is degraded by large area of artifact, so that diagnostics are almost impossible in deteriorated region. In this paper, we proposed an external coil system that can reduce the artifact of MR image due to the internal coupling magnet. By finite element analysis estimating area of MR artifact according to varying current and shape of the external coil, optimal coil parameters were extracted. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed external coil system was verified by confirming the artifact at real MRI scan.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.16 no.7
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• pp.835-842
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• 2022

This study is aimed to evaluate the effects of a synthetic MR technique in reducing metal artifacts. In the experiment, the in-plane and through-plane images were acquired by applying a synthetic MR technique and a high-speed spin echo technique to a phantom manufactured with screw for spinal surgery. The area of the metal artifact was compared. The metal artifacts were measured by dividing the signal-loss and the signal pile-up areas, and the area of the final artifact was calculated through the sum of the two. As a result, the metal artifacts were relatively reduced when the synthetic MR techniques were applied to both in-plane and through-plane. Comparing by sequence, the in-plane T1 images decreased by 23.45%, T2 images by 20.85%, PD images by 19.67%, and FLAIR images by 22.12%. Also, in the case of the through-plane, the T1 image decreased by 62.95%, the T2 image decreased by 73.93%, the PD image decreased by 74.68%, and the FLAIR image decreased by 66.43%. The cause of this result is that when the synthetic MR technique is applied, the distortion is due to the signal pile-up and does not occur and the size of the entire metal artifact is reduced. Therefore, synthetic MR technique can very effectively reduce metal artifacts, which can help to increase the diagnostic value of images.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.73-78
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• 2010

This study attempted to examine whether the propeller diffusion weighted image method may remove magnetic susceptibility artifacts caused by metallic materials. A comparison of occurrence rates of magnetic susceptibility artifacts in the four regions, both temporal lobes, pons, and orbit, between b = 0 and b = 1,000 s/mm2 images was made after obtaining echo-planar diffusion weighted image, propeller diffusion weighted image, and ADC map images, respectively, from a total of 20 patients who had MRI shots taken of their brain and were found to be with retained metallic foreign bodies within their teeth using a 3.0T MR scanner. In the case of echo-planar diffusion weighted image technique, the presence of metallic materials may bring in some limits on accurate diagnosis due to magnetic susceptibility artifacts, while the propeller diffusion weighted image technique where magnetic susceptibility artifacts decrease is expected to be more useful in ensuring accurate diagnosis in the clinical context.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.411-419
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• 2004

When the imaging object rotates in image plane during MRI scan, its rotation causes phase error and non-uniform sampling to MRI signal. The model of the problem including phase error non-uniform sampling of MRI signal showed that the MRI signals corrupted by rotations about an arbitrary center and the origin in image plane are different in their phases. Therefore the following methods are presented to improve the quality of the MR image which includes the artifact. The first, assuming that the angle of 2-D rotational motion is already known and the position of 2-D rotational center is unknown, an algorithm to correct the artifact which is based on the phase correction is presented. The second, in case of 2-D rotational motion with unknown rotational center and unknown rotational angle, an algorithm is presented to correct the MRI artifact. At this case, the energy of an ideal MR image is minimum outside the boundary of the imaging object to estimate unknown motion parameters and the measured energy increases when the imaging object has an rotation. By using this property, an evaluation function is defined to estimate unknown values of rotational angle at each phase encoding step. Finally, the effectiveness of this presented techniques is shown by using a phantom image with simulated motion and a real image with 2-D translational shift and rotation.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.25-32
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• 2005

Purpose : To evaluate the degree of the artifact which is caused by the mascara and the eye shadow when acquiring MR images and compare the difference of the image distortion according to the change of various pulse sequence. Material and Method : The popular domestic mascara and eye shadow products were selected from three different companies respectively and divided into two groups mascara (M1, M2, M3 ), eye shadow (E1, E2, E3). Self-designed quadrature type saddle coil which has 4 cm inside diameter, 8 cm length and which is for both Tx and Rx was used. MR image was acquired respectively after applying the mascara to the tape from study 1, the eye shadow to the tape from study 2 and adding the eye shadow to the mascara from study 3. The FSE(fast spin echo), the SE(spin echo), the GE(gradient echo) were used as pulse sequences. The degree of the image distortion which was measured from each sequence was analyzed in quality and quantity. Result : The mascara and the eye shadow caused the artifacts to the MR images partially and induced the image distortion. There was a little difference in terms of the degree of artifact according to the change of pulse sequence. From the study 3 in which the eye shadow was applied to the mascara, on the axial plane image, the width of artifact was 16.73 mm in the GE pulse sequence, 6.64 mm in the SE pulse sequence, and 6.19 mm in the FSE pulse sequence. The degree of the artifact appeared highly in order of the GE, the SE and the FSE. On the sagittal plane image, the length of artifact was 22.84 mm in the GE, 17.81 mm in the SE and it appeared highly with the SE and the FSE technique order. Conclusion : When examining the eyeball and the brain of a woman with the mascara and the eye shadow, we have to consider that the artifact caused by them can have an effect on the image diagnosis. We concluded that it is more suitable for a brain and a eyeball T2 emphasizing image to use the FSE technique than the GE technique.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.401-406
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• 2012

When viewed using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, invasive materials inside the human body, in many cases, severely distort the MR image of human tissues. The degree of the MR image distortion increases in proportion not only to the difference in the susceptibility between the invasive material and the human tissue, but also to the intensity of the magnetic field induced by the MRI system. In this study, by blending paramagnetic Ti particles with diamagnetic graphite, we synthesized $Ti_{100-x}C_x$ composites that can reduce the artifact in the MR image under the high-strength magnetic field. Of the developed composites, $Ti_{70}C_{30}$ showed the magnetic susceptibility of ${\chi}=67.6{\times}10^{-6}$, which corresponds to 30% of those of commercially available Ti alloys, the lowest reported in the literature. The level of the MR image distortion in the vicinity of the $Ti_{70}C_{30}$ composite insert was nearly negligible even under the high magnetic field of 4.7 T. In this paper, we reported on a methodology of designing new structural materials for bio-applications, their synthesis, experimental confirmation and measurement of MR images.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.461-468
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• 2009

Magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT) enables us to perform high-resolution conductivity imaging of an electrically conducting object. Injecting low-frequency current through a pair of surface electrodes, we measure an induced magnetic flux density using an MRI scanner and this requires a sophisticated MR phase imaging method. Applying a conductivity image reconstruction algorithm to measured magnetic flux density data subject to multiple injection currents, we can produce multi-slice cross-sectional conductivity images. When there exists a local region of fat, the well-known chemical shift phenomenon produces misalignments of pixels in MR images. This may result in artifacts in magnetic flux density image and consequently in conductivity image. In this paper, we investigate chemical shift artifact correction in MREIT based on the well-known three-point Dixon technique. The major difference is in the fact that we must focus on the phase image in MREIT. Using three Dixon data sets, we explain how to calculate a magnetic flux density image without chemical shift artifact. We test the correction method through imaging experiments of a cheese phantom and postmortem canine head. Experimental results clearly show that the method effectively eliminates artifacts related with the chemical shift phenomenon in a reconstructed conductivity image.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.30 no.10
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• pp.1182-1186
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• 2001

Objectives : MR fluid-attenuated inversion recovery(FLAIR) image uses paired long inversion time and relaxation time that nulls the signal from CSF. With nulling of the CSF long echo time readout could be used to increase T2-weighting, hence improving the conspicuousness of most tissue lesions without the deleterious effects of CSF artifact seen on T2 weighted sequence. We examed the usefulness of FALIR image in the diagnosis of mild head injury. Methods : A total of 38 patients with mild head injury were examined by FLAIR image. We compared those images with CT scan and T1, T2-weighted images. Careful observation of MR images were done by two well-trained neuroradiologists. Each image was compared for conspicuousness and detectability of traumatic lesions might have shown abnormal signal intensities. The Wilcoxon signed ranks test was used for statistical evaluation. Results : The FLAIR image was significantly more sensitive than those of other images(p<0.001). T2 FFE(Fast Field Echo) image was more useful for detection of small petechial hemorrhages. Conclusion : FLAIR image is considered to be more sensitive than those of conventional MR images in the evaluation of mild head injuries.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.25 no.7A
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• pp.1006-1016
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• 2000

This study is to segment white matter, gray matter, and cerebrospinal fluid(CSF) on a brain MR image and to calculate the volume of each. First, after removing the background on a brain MR image, we segmented the whole region of a brain from a skull and a fat layer. Then, we calculated the partial volume of each component, which was present in scanning finite thickness, with the arithmetical analysis of gray value from the internal region of a brain showing the blurring effects on the basis of the MR image forming principle. Calculated partial volumes of white matter, gray matter and CSF were used to determine the threshold for the segmentation of each component on a brain MR image showing the blurring effects. Finally, the volumes of segmented white matter, gray matter, and CSF were calculated. The result of this study can be used as the objective diagnostic method to determine the degree of brain atrophy of patients who have neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and cerebral palsy.