• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.75-79
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• 1999

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an imaging technique used to produce high quality images of the inside of the animal body. MRI is based on the principles of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and started out as a tomographic imaging technique, that is it produced an image of the NMR signal in a thin slice through the animal body. The animal body is primarily fat and water, Fat and water have many hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen nuclei have an NMR signal. For these reasons magnetic resonance imaging primarily images the NMR signal from the hydrogen nuclei. Hydrogen protons, within the body align with the magnetic field. By applying short radio frequency (RF) pulses to a specific anatomical slice, the protons in the slice absorb energy at this resonant frequency causing them to spin perpendicular to the magnetic field. As the protons relax back into alignment with the magnetic field, a signal is received by an RF coil that acts as an antennae. This signal is processed by a computer to produce diagnostic images of the anatomical area of interest.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetic Resonance Society
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.66-69
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• 2020

In ultra-low field magnetic resonance imaging (ULF-MRI), the strength of a static magnetic field can be comparable to that of gradient field. On that occasion, the gradient field is accompanied by concomitant gradient field, which yields distortion and blurring artifacts on MR images. Here, we focused on the distortion artifact and derived the equations capable of correcting it. Its usefulness was confirmed through the corrections in both simulated and experimental images. This solution will be effective for acquiring more accurate images in low and/or ultra-low magnetic fields.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.171-174
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• 2001

Shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is a form of child abuse that can cause significant head injuries, of which subdural hematoma (SDH) is the most common manifestation. We report the MRI findings of chronic SDH in three cases of SBS, involving two-, three- and eight-month-old babies. The SDH signal was mostly low on T1-weighted images and high on T2-weighted images, suggesting chronic SDH. In chronic SDH, a focal high signal on T1-weighted images was also noted, suggesting rebleeding. Contrast-enhanced MRI revealed diffuse dural enhancement.

• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.96-101
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• 2006

Four dogs with neurologic dysfunction resulted from intracranial hemorrhage by head trauma were referred to Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, Chungnam National University. There were no remarkable findings in survey radiography in four cases. CT and MRI scans were diagnostic in these cases. Three dogs underwent CT scanning. On CT images, the lesion was hyperdense and was not enhanced after intravenous contrast administration in dog 1 and dog 2. On CT of dog 4, there was no significant finding. All of four dogs were verified by dorsal, sagittal, and transverse T1-weighted (T1W) and T2-weighted (T2W) images. Appearance of the lesions in dog 1 and dog 2 was isointense (dog 2) or isointense with hyperintense rim (dog 1) on T1W images and hyperintense on T2W images. In dog 3 and dog 4, there were hypointense and hyperintense lesions on T1Wand T2W images respectively. The lesions in four dogs were located in the left intracerebral region, intracerebral and cerebellovestibular region, subdural space, and right cerebral hemisphere, respectively.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.215-223
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• 2016

Purpose: The management of metal-induced field inhomogeneities is one of the major concerns of distortion-free magnetic resonance images near metallic implants. The recently proposed method called "Slice Encoding for Metal Artifact Correction (SEMAC)" is an effective spin echo pulse sequence of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) near metallic implants. However, as SEMAC uses the noisy resolved data elements, SEMAC images can have a major problem for improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) without compromising the correction of metal artifacts. To address that issue, this paper presents a novel reconstruction technique for providing an improvement of the SNR in SEMAC images without sacrificing the correction of metal artifacts. Materials and Methods: Low-rank approximation in each coil image is first performed to suppress the noise in the slice direction, because the signal is highly correlated between SEMAC-encoded slices. Secondly, SEMAC images are reconstructed by the best linear unbiased estimator (BLUE), also known as Gauss-Markov or weighted least squares. Noise levels and correlation in the receiver channels are considered for the sake of SNR optimization. To this end, since distorted excitation profiles are sparse, $l_1$ minimization performs well in recovering the sparse distorted excitation profiles and the sparse modeling of our approach offers excellent correction of metal-induced distortions. Results: Three images reconstructed using SEMAC, SEMAC with the conventional two-step noise reduction, and the proposed image denoising for metal MRI exploiting sparsity and low rank approximation algorithm were compared. The proposed algorithm outperformed two methods and produced 119% SNR better than SEMAC and 89% SNR better than SEMAC with the conventional two-step noise reduction. Conclusion: We successfully demonstrated that the proposed, novel algorithm for SEMAC, if compared with conventional de-noising methods, substantially improves SNR and reduces artifacts.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.465-470
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• 2017

Objective : Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) grading systems using sagittal images are useful for evaluation of lumbar foraminal stenosis. We evaluated whether such a grading system is useful as a diagnostic tool for surgery. Methods : Between July 2014 and June 2015, 99 consecutive patients underwent unilateral lumbar foraminotomy for lumbar foraminal stenosis. Surgically confirmed foraminal stenosis and the contralateral, asymptomatic neuroforamen were assessed based on a 4-point MRI grading system. Two experienced researchers independently evaluated the MR sagittal images. Interobserver agreement and intraobserver agreement were analyzed using ${\kappa}$ statistics. Results : The mean age of patients (54 women, 45 men) was 62.5 years. A total of 101 levels (202 neuroforamens) were evaluated. MRI grades for operated neuroforamens were as follows : Grade 0 in 0.99%, Grade 1 in 5.28%, Grade 2 in 14.85%, and Grade 3 in 78.88%. Interobserver agreement was moderate for operated neuroforamens (${\kappa}=0.511$) and good for asymptomatic neuroforamens (${\kappa}=0.696$). Intraobserver agreement by reader 1 for operated neuroforamens was good (${\kappa}=0.776$) and that for asymptomatic neuroforamens was very good (${\kappa}=0.831$). In terms of lumbar level, interobserver agreement for L5-S1 (${\kappa}=0.313$, fair) was relatively lower than the other level (${\kappa}=0.804$, very good). Conclusion : MRI grading system for lumbar foraminal stenosis is thought to be useful as a diagnostic tool for surgery in the lumbar spine; however, it is less reliable for symptomatic L5-S1 foraminal stenosis than for other levels. Thus, various clinical factors as well as the MRI grading system are required for surgical decision-making.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.436-442
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• 2012

Traumatic loading during car accidents or sports activities can lead to cervical spinal cord injury. Experiments in spinal cord injury research are mainly carried out on rabbit or rat. Finite element models that include the rat cervical spinal cord and adjacent soft tissues should be developed for efficient studies of mechanisms of spinal cord injury. Images of a rat were obtained from high resolution MRI scanner. Polygonal surfaces were extracted structure by structure from the MRI data using the ITK-SNAP volume segmentation software. These surfaces were converted to Non-uniform Rational B-spline surfaces by the INUS Rapidform rapid prototyping software. Rapidform was also used to generate a thin shell surface model for the dura mater which sheathes the spinal cord. Altair's Hypermesh pre-processor was used to generate finite element meshes for each structure. These processes in this study can be utilized in modeling of other biomedical tissues and can be one of examples for reverse engineering on biomechanics.

• Journal of Korean Dental Science
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.16-27
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the correlation between the clinical symptoms of temporomandibular disorder and findings in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Materials and Methods: Clinical data and MRI images were collected from a total of 240 German patients. Clinical symptoms were briefed as joint clicking, crepitus and pain. MRI findings were further defined according to the condyle position, condyle degeneration, disc positon, disc degeneration and the presence of osteophyte/sclerosis/synovitis. Hypermobility was separately recorded. Correlation analysis between parameters was performed. Result: Joint clicking had a positive correlation with unilateral disc degeneration, osteophyte, sclerosis and synovitis. Crepitus had a significant correlation with bilateral osteophyte. Pain was not correlated with any MRI findings except hypermobility. Conclusion: Selective correlations between the MRI findings and clinical symptoms were elucidated. The results of this study imply that condyle-disc deformities could be advanced without pain, and that joint clicking and crepitus could be clinical symptoms of condyle-disc degeneration.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.44-44
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• 2003

To determine feasibility of contrast-enhanced MRI (co-MRI) at true end-diastole (ED) free from limitation of time for inversion-recovery and trigger window for quantifying transmural extent of infarction. 대상 및 방법： MRI was performed in 18 patients with myocardial infarction. Cine imaging and co-MRI with same registered slices in short axis were peformed. To allow true ED co-MRI, ECG synchronization should use two RR-intervals for one acquisition of a segment of k-space by setting the heart rate to half that of the true heart rate. Trigger delay time was adjusted to the RR-interval for imaging at ED and to the sum of RR-interval plus the time between R-wave and the end-systole (ES) determined in cine images for imaging at ES.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.91-91
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• 2003

To determine feasibility of contrast-enhanced MRI (co-MRI) at true end-diastole (ED) free from limitation of time for inversion-recovery and trigger window for quantifying transmural extent of infarction. 대상 및 방법： MRI was peformed in 18 patients with myocardial infarction. Cine imaging and co-MRI with same registered slices in short axis were performed. To allow true ED co-MRI, ECG synchronization should use two RR-intervals for one acquisition of a segment of k-space by setting the heart rate to half that of the true heart rate. Trigger delay time was adjusted to the RR-interval for imaging at ED and to the sum of RR-interval plus the time between R-wave and the end-systole (ES) determined in cine images for imaging at ES.