• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.44-48
• /
• 2021

In order to obtain ultra-high resolution MRI images, research and development of 11 T or higher superconducting magnets have been actively conducted in the world, recently. The high-temperature superconductor (HTS), first discovered in 1986, was very limited in industrial application until mid-2010, despite its high critical current characteristics in the high magnetic field compared to the low-temperature superconductor. This is because HTS magnets were unable to operate stably due to the thermal damage when a quench occurred. With the introduction of no-insulation (NI) HTS magnet winding technology that does not burn electrically, it could be expected that the HTS magnets are dramatically reduced in weight, volume, and cost. In this paper, a 6 T-class NI HTS magnet for basic characteristic analysis was designed, and a distributed equivalent circuit model of the NI coils was configured to analyze the charging current characteristics caused by excitation current, and the charge delay phenomenon and loss were predicted through the development of a simulation model. Additionally, the critical current of the NI HTS magnets was estimated, considering the magnetic field, its angle and temperature with a given current. The loss due to charging delay characteristics was analyzed and the result was shown. It is meaningful to obtain detailed operation technology to secure a stable operation protocol for a 6T NI HTS magnet which is actually manufactured.

• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.35-69
• /
• 1995

The managerial environment of hospitals in Korea characterized by low levels of medical insurance fees is worsening by increasing government regulations as to the utilization of medical services, rising costs of labor, material, and medical equipments, growing patient expectations concerning the quality of services, and escalating competitions among large hospitals in the market. Hospitals should seek for their survival strategies in this harsh environment and they should have information about costs of their products in doing so. However, it has not been available due to the complexity of the production process of hospital services. The objectives of this study were to develop a service-based cost accounting model and to apply the developed model to a study hospital to obtain cost information of hospital services. A model commonly used for the job-order product cost accounting in the manufacturing industry was modified for the use in hospitals in Korea. Actual costs, instead of standard costs, incurred to produce a unit of services during a given period of time were estimated in the model. Data required to implement the model included financial information, statistics for the allocation of supportive cost center costs to final cost centers, statistics for the allocation of final cost center costs to services, and the volume of each services charged to patients during a study period. The model was executed using data of a university teaching hospital located in Seoul for the fiscal year 1992. Data for financial information, allocation statistics fo supportive service costs, and the volume of services, most of them in electronic form, were available to the study. Data for allocation statistics of final cost center costs were collected in the study. There were 15 types of evaluation and management service, 2, 923 types of technical service, and 2, 608 types of drug and material service charged to patients in the study hospital during the fiscal year 1992. Labor costs of each of seven types of pesonnel, material costs of 611 types of drugs and materials, and depreciation costs of 212 types of medical equipments, miscellaneous costs, and indirect costs incurred in producing a unit of each services were estimated. Medical insurance fees for basic services such as evaluation and management of inpatients and outpatients, injection, and filling prescriptions, and for operating procedures were found to be set lower than costs. Infrequent services which use expensive medical equipments showed negative revenuse as well. On the other hand, fees for services not covered by the insurance such as CT, MRI and Sonogram, and for laboratory tests were higher than costs. This study has a significance in making it possible for a hospital to obtain cost information for all types of services which produced income based on all types of expenses incurred during a given period of time. This information can assist the management of a hospital in finding an effective cost reduction strategy, an efficient service-mix strategy under a given fee structure, and an optimum strategy for within-hospital resource allocations.

• The Journal of Korean Orthopaedic Ultrasound Society
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.1-6
• /
• 2011

Purpose: To evaluate the usefulness of ultrasonography in diagnosis of the medial meniscus tear as a screening tool before performing magnetic resonance imaging. Materials and Methods: From April 2009 to September 2010, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was taken in 147 knees out of 341 knees examined with ultrasonography (US) under the suspicion of medial meniscus tear. The sonographic findings were 16 without abnormality, 12 inhomogeneity, 4 cluster, 60 cleavage and 55 more than 5mm medial extrusion of medial meniscus. In Statistical analysis, sensitivity and specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive values were calculated. Results: The MRI showed abnormality in 104 knees. Sensitivity and specificity of ultrasonography for MRI was 94.2% and 23.3%, respectively. Positive predictive value was 74.8%, negative predictive value was 62.5%. The positive predictive value of ultrasonography were 58.3% in heterogeneity, 100% in showing cluster, 75% in visible cleft and 80% in medial extrusion. Conclusion: The US is a useful tool in prediction of medial meniscus tear before confirming it in high-cost MRI.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.23
• /
• pp.10057-10059
• /
• 2015

Positron emission tomography (PET) as the functional component of current hybrid imaging (like PET/CT or PET/MRI) seems to dominate the horizon of medical imaging in coming decades. $^{18}$Flourodeoxyglucose ($^{18}FDG$) is the most commonly used probe in oncology and also in cardiology and neurology around the globe. However, the major capital cost and exorbitant running expenditure of low to medium energy cyclotrons (about 20 MeV) and radiochemistry units are the seminal reasons of low number of cyclotrons but mushroom growth pattern of PET scanners. This fact and longer half-life of $^{18}F$ (110 minutes) have paved the path of a centralized model in which $^{18}FDG$ is produced by commercial PET radiopharmacies and the finished product (multi-dose vial with tungsten shielding) is dispensed to customers having only PET scanners. This indeed reduced the cost but has limitations of dependence upon timely arrival of daily shipments as delay caused by any reason results in cancellation or rescheduling of the PET procedures. In recent years, industry and academia have taken a step forward by producing low energy, table top cyclotrons with compact and automated radiochemistry units (Lab-on-Chip). This decentralized strategy enables the users to produce on-demand doses of PET probe themselves at reasonably low cost using an automated and user-friendly technology. This technological development would indeed provide a real impetus to the availability of complete set up of PET based molecular imaging at an affordable cost to the developing countries.

• Korean Journal of Digital Imaging in Medicine
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.33-38
• /
• 2005

Modern hospitals have been greatly facilitated with information technology (IT) such as hospital information system (HIS). One of the most prominent achievements is medical imaging and image data management so-called Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). Due to inevitable use of diagnostic images (such as X-ray, CT, MRI), PACS made tremendous impact not only on radiology department but also nearly all clinical departments for exchange and sharing image related clinical information. There is no doubt that better use of PACS leads to highly efficient clinical administration and hospital management. However, due to rapid and widespread acceptance of PACS storage and management of digitized image data in hospital introduces overhead and bottleneck when transferring images among clinical departments within and/or across hospitals. Despite numerous technical difficulties, financing for installing PACS is a major hindrance to overcome. In addition, a mirroring or a clustering backup can be used to maximize security and efficiency, which may not be considered as cost-effective approach because of extra hardware expenses. In this study therefore we have developed a new based on grid of distributed PACS in order to balance between the cost and network performance among multiple hospitals.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
• /
• 2003.11a
• /
• pp.511-514
• /
• 2003

본 연구는 입력된 영상으로부터 특정한 형태를 이루고 있는 대상 물체를 추출함에 있어, 처리에 소요되는 시간 비용(Time cost)을 줄이는 것을 목적으로 하고 있다. 이를 위하여 특정 관심 지역(Region of Interest)이나 대상 물체(Tareet object)의 경계 검출(Boundary detection)을 하는 과정에 통계학적 수치자료(SSM : Statistical Shape Model)를 사용한 접근법을 이용하였다. 또한, 향후 연구 방향인 의료 영상해석(Medical image analysis)으로의 확장성을 고려, 의료 영상 해석에 많이 사용되어지는 MRI, CT, X-Ray 이미지가 Gray level 영상이라는 것을 감안하여 Gray level 영상을 연구 대상으로 삼았다.

• 한국초전도학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• v.10
• /
• pp.27-34
• /
• 2000

HTS wires processed by PIT method are now available for magnet applications. But, those wires can not be used over 40 K due to weak link. This leads to necessity of development of coated conductor which can retain high $J_c$ at high field in liquid nitrogen. In this paper, various technical issues and the R&D status for both PIT wires and coated conductor were discussed. The difference of coated conductor's processes were also investigated and summarized. Various requirements for a design of HTS magnets were discussed. Anisostropic $J_c$ property with respect to magnetic field was considered to determine the coil's critical current. Low n value is a critical parameter to degrade a field stability with respect to time for a persistent mode HTS magnet. The relation between the margin of operation current and n value was investigated. Prototype HTS magnets with PIT wires are being developed for various applications such as crystal growth, MRI, magnetic separator and etc. HTS magnets will come into wide use in various fields of industries if the HTS wires with a low performance cost is developed.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.102-104
• /
• 2019

Registering different kinds of clinical images widely used in diagnostic and surgery planning. However, cause of tumor growth or effected by gravity, human tissue has plenty of non-rigid deformation with clinically. Non-rigid registration allows the mapping of straight lines to curves. Therefore, such local deformation makes registration more complicated. In this work, we mainly introduce intra-subject, inter-modality registration. This paper mainly studies the nonlinear registration method of 2D medical image registration. The general medical image registration algorithm requires manual intervention, and cost long registration time. In our work to reduce the registration time in rough registration step, the barycenter and the direction of main axis of the image is calculated, which reduces the calculation amount compared with the method of using mutual information.

• Clinical Pain
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.86-92
• /
• 2021

Ultrasound imaging in clinical practice is one of the widely used diagnostic methods because there is no radiation risk, more cost- effective compared to MRI or CT, and possible to perform an intervention through fast real-time imaging. In order to increase the diagnostic value, the studies of contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) using an ultrasound contrast agent have been actively conducted since about 50 years ago and are being used clinically in vascularity and microcirculation of internal organs. Although ultrasound is actively used for the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases in musculoskeletal disorders, there are some limitations in diagnosing mild or small lesions, inflammatory reactions, or abnormalities at the molecular level. In this review, the principles, types, and research, and clinical applications of ultrasound contrast agents have been summarized and introduced. If we understand the characteristics of the ultrasound contrast agents and anatomical knowledge, as well as molecular changes, the ultrasound contrast agents are widely applied in musculoskeletal disorders and have tremendous potential for diagnosis and treatment.

• Progress in Medical Physics
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.3-16
• /
• 1991

Abstract. An area of particularly rapid technological growth in the last 15 years has been medical imaging (conventional X-ray, ultrasound, X-ray computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). As the number and complexity of imaging studies rises, it becomes ever more important to distribute these images and the associated diagnoses in a timely and cost-effective fashion. The purpose of this paper is to describe the requirements for a future digital radiology system which will efficiently handle the large volume of images that generated, add new functionality to improve productivity of physicians, technologists, and other health care providers, and provide enough flexibility to allow the system to grow as medical image technology grows.