• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.52-59
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• 2010

To examine among patients with vertebral compression fracture the extent to which signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) values at the lumbar vertebral compression fracture site vary on diffusion-weighted MR images according to varying b values on the 1.5T MR device. Diffusion-weighted MR images of 30 patients with compression fracture due to chronic osteoporosis who underwent vertebral MRI from Jan. 2008 to Nov. 2009 were respectively obtained using a 1.5-T MR scanner with the b values increased from 400, 600, 800, 1,000 to $1,200\;s/mm^2$. For diffusion-weighted MR images with different b values, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was assessed at three sites: the site of compression fracture of the lumbar vertebral body at L1 to L5, and both the upper and lower discs of the said fracture site, while for ADC map images with different b values, the SNR and ADC were respectively assessed at those three sites. As a quantitative analysis, diffusion-weighted MR images and ADC map images with b value of $400\;s/mm^2$ (the base b values) were respectively compared with the corresponding images with each different b value. As far as qualitative analysis is concerned, for both diffusion-weighted MR and ADC map images with b value of $400\;s/mm^2$, the extent to which signal intensity values obtained at the site of compression fracture of the lumbar vertebral body at L1 to L5 vary according to the increasing b values were examined. The quantitative analysis found that for both diffusion-weighted MR and ADC map images, as the b values increased, the SNR were relatively lowered at all the three sites, compared to the base b value. Also, it was found that as the b values increased, ADC valueswere relatively lowered at all the three sites on ADC map images. On the other hand, the qualitative analysis found that as the b values increased to more than $400\;s/mm^2$, the signal intensity gradually decreased at all the sites, while at the levels of more than $1,000\;s/mm^2$, severe image noises appeared at all of the three sites. In addition, higher signal intensity was found at the site of compression fracture of the lumbar vertebral body than at the discs. Findings showed that with the b value being increased, both the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) values gradually decreased at all the sites of the lumbar vertebral compression fracture and both the upper and lower discs of the fracture site, suggesting that there is a possibility of a wider range of applications to assessment of various vertebral pathologies by utilizing multi b values in the diffusion-weighted MRI examination.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.104-107
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• 2004

In this study, using brain phantom for multi-modality imaging, we acquired CT, MR and PET images and performed registration of these anatomical images and nuclear medicine functional images. The algorithms and program applied for registration were Chamfer Matching and Mutual Information Maximization algorithm which have been using frequently in clinic and verified accuracy respectively. In result, both algorithms were useful methods for CT-MR, CT-PET and MR-PET. But Mutual Information Maximization was more effective algorithm for low resolution image as nuclear medicine functional image.

• Proceedings of the Korea Multimedia Society Conference
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• 2002.05c
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• pp.160-163
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• 2002

본 연구는 의료영상 중에 가장 많이 사용하는 의료 영상인 MR영상 중에서 머리 부위의 질병인 뇌종양에 대한 진단을 돕기 위한 연구이다. 뇌 MR영상의 T2강조 영상을 살펴보면, 종양 영역은 명암이 밝게 나타나고 종양 영역의 주변은 어둡게 나타나는 특성을 볼 수 있다. 따라서 제안된 방법은 뇌종양 특성인 명암의 밝기 정보를 기반으로 비정상 영역 내에서 명암 정보가 유사한 영역끼리 그룹화하고 그 중에 가장 밝은 영역을 종양 후보 영역으로 추출한 후 각 후보 영역들 중에서 MBR이 가장 큰 것을 종양으로 검출한다.

• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.320-323
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• 2013

Spinal cord infarction is becoming recognized as an important cause of acute myelopathy in cats. Although the definitive diagnosis is confirmed through postmortem histopathologic examination, MR imaging features provide valuable informations for the diagnosis of spinal cord infarction. The aim of this report is to describe MR findings of acute spinal cord infarction in two cats and to evaluate usefulness of low field MRI (0.3Tesla) as a potential diagnostic tool of acute spinal cord infarction. A cat (unknown age, neutered male mixed breed cat) was referred one day after the acute onset of non-ambulatory spastic tetraparesis and the other cat (a 9-year-old, neutered female domestic short hair cat) was presented due to the acute onset of non-ambulatory paraparesis and one day later paraplegia. The lesions of the MR images were shown on the spinal cord parenchyma over C2 to C6 in case 1 and L2 to L5 in case 2. The MR images in these two cases were characterized by focal intramedullary lesions, mainly involving grey matter which were hyperintense T2 weighted and FLAIR images and hyperintense on DWI and hypointense on ADC map. The MR findings in both cases were highly suggestive of acute spinal cord infarctions, based upon previous reported small animal cases and human cases. In conclusion, based on MR features, together with the history and clinical examination findings, MRI modality can be used as an antemortem tool for the diagnosis of acute spinal cord infarction in cats.

• 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.

• Annals of Clinical Neurophysiology
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.79-86
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• 2019

Background: Magnetic resonance (MR) images are useful for diagnosing myopathy. The purpose of this study was to determine the usefulness of lower-limb MR images in Korean patients with distal myopathy. Methods: We reviewed medical records in the myopathy database from January 2002 to October 2016. We selected 21 patients from 91 unrelated families with distal myopathy: four with GNE myopathy, 11 with dysferlinopathy, and six with ADSSL1 myopathy. Results: Ten (48%) of the 21 patients were men. The ages of the participants at symptom onset and imaging were $19.2{\pm}9.5$ and $30.4{\pm}9.0$ years (mean${\pm}$standard deviation), respectively. Their grade on the modified Gardner-Medwin and Walton grade was $3.3{\pm}1.7$. The strength grade of the knee extensors was not correlated with the Mercuri scale for the quadriceps (r = -0.247, p = 0.115). However, the Medical Research Council grades of the knee flexors, ankle dorsiflexors, and ankle plantar flexors were significantly correlated with the Mercuri scale ratings of the knee flexors (r = -0.497, p = 0.001), tibialis anterior (r = -0.727, p < 0.001), and ankle plantar flexors (r = -0.620, p < 0.001), respectively. T1-weighted MR images showed characteristic fatty replacement patterns that were consistent with the causative genes. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering of the Mercuri scale showed that the main factors contributing to the dichotomy were the causative gene and the clinical severity. Conclusions: This study is the first to reveal the usefulness of lower-limb MR images in the differential diagnosis of distal myopathy in Korea.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.1167-1187
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• 2020

With the development of medical imaging technology, image registration has been widely used in the field of disease diagnosis. The registration between different modal images of brain magnetic resonance (MR) is particularly important for the diagnosis of brain diseases. However, previous registration methods don't take advantage of the prior knowledge of bilateral brain symmetry. Moreover, the difference in gray scale information of different modal images increases the difficulty of registration. In this paper, a multimodal medical image registration method based on image segmentation and symmetric self-similarity is proposed. This method uses modal independent self-similar information and modal consistency information to register images. More particularly, we propose two novel symmetric self-similarity constraint operators to constrain the segmented medical images and convert each modal medical image into a unified modal for multimodal image registration. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively reduce the error rate of brain MR multimodal medical image registration with rotation and translation transformations (average 0.43mm and 0.60mm) respectively, whose accuracy is better compared to state-of-the-art image registration methods.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.156-163
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• 2021

Recently, neuromelanin and nigrosome imaging techniques have been developed to evaluate the substantia nigra in Parkinson's disease. Previous studies have shown potential benefits of quantitative analysis of neuromelanin and nigrosome images in the substantia nigra, although visual assessments have been performed to evaluate structures in most studies. In this study, we investigate the potential of using deep learning based automatic region segmentation techniques for quantitative analysis of the substantia nigra. The deep convolutional neural network was trained to automatically segment substantia nigra regions on 3D nigrosome and neuromelanin sensitive MR images obtained from 30 subjects. With a 5-fold cross-validation, the mean calculated dice similarity coefficient between manual and deep learning was 0.70 ± 0.11. Although calculated dice similarity coefficients were relatively low due to empirically drawn margins, selected slices were overlapped for more than two slices of all subjects. Our results demonstrate that deep convolutional neural network-based method could provide reliable localization of substantia nigra regions on neuromelanin and nigrosome sensitive MR images.

• The Journal of the Korean bone and joint tumor society
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.162-168
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• 2003

Purpose: Primary malignant bone tumors are classified with mesenchymal sarcomas (MS) such as osteosarcoma and chondrosarcoma and small round cell sarcomas (SRS) such as Ewing's sarcoma and lymphoma. Radiological examinations for skeletal sarcoma were using MR scan in tubular bone sarcomas and CT scan in flat bone sarcomas recently. Both MR and CT scans show some findings of bone destruction and soft tissue mass but MR scans don't reveal a finding with mineralization relatively. So we investigated bone destructive pattern of skeletal sarcomas on both MR and CT scans for differentiation of MS and SRS. Materials and Methods: There are 28 MS and 26 SRS examined with MR or CT scans. The findings according to bone destructive pattern were divided to eccentric and concentric in 26 cases of tubular bone sarcomas with MR scan and 28 cases of flat bone sarcomas with CT scan. Results: MR images revealed eccentric destruction in 12 cases of 16 MS and concentric in all cases of 10 SRS (p>.01). CT images showed eccentric destruction in 10 cases of 12 MS and concentric bone destruction in 13 cases of 16 SRS (p>.01) Conclusion: The findings divided to eccentric and concentric bone destructive patterns were useful for differential diagnosis of MS from SRS on both MR and CT scans.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.121-125
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• 2006

A 48-year-old man presented with a dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (DFSP) of the scalp associated with local recurrence. Axial T1- and T2-weighted images demonstrated a well-circumscribed hypointense and intermediate hyperintense mass in the skin and subcutaneous layer of the scalp, respectively. Contrast-enhanced T1-weighted images showed the strongly enhanced mass invasion to the skin, subcutaneous layer and adjacent galeal layer. Scalp DFSP is very uncommon but is an aggressive tumor, so MR imaging diagnosis of the extent of the lesion to underlying structures, and initial wide local resection is important to prevent recurrence.