• Journal of The Korean Radiological Technologist Association
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.55-60
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• 2002

Purpose : The aim of this study is to rise interest in system control for digital image of high quality by investigating diagnostic value of Digital radiographic system in upper gastrointestinal study Materials and Method : Upper gastrointestinal study wa

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.384-394
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• 2024

Objective: To evaluate the image quality of novel dark-blood computed tomography angiography (CTA) imaging combined with deep learning reconstruction (DLR) compared to delayed-phase CTA images with hybrid iterative reconstruction (HIR), to visualize the cervical artery wall in patients with Takayasu arteritis (TAK). Materials and Methods: This prospective study continuously recruited 53 patients with TAK (mean age: 33.8 ± 10.2 years; 49 females) between January and July 2022 who underwent head-neck CTA scans. The arterial- and delayed-phase images were reconstructed using HIR and DLR. Subtracted images of the arterial-phase from the delayed-phase were then added to the original delayed-phase using a denoising filter to generate the final-dark-blood images. Qualitative image quality scores and quantitative parameters were obtained and compared among the three groups of images: Delayed-HIR, Dark-blood-HIR, and Dark-blood-DLR. Results: Compared to Delayed-HIR, Dark-blood-HIR images demonstrated higher qualitative scores in terms of vascular wall visualization and diagnostic confidence index (all P < 0.001). These qualitative scores further improved after applying DLR (Dark-blood-DLR compared to Dark-blood-HIR, all P < 0.001). Dark-blood DLR also showed higher scores for overall image noise than Dark-blood-HIR (P < 0.001). In the quantitative analysis, the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) values between the vessel wall and lumen for the bilateral common carotid arteries and brachiocephalic trunk were significantly higher on Dark-blood-HIR images than on Delayed-HIR images (all P < 0.05). The CNR values were significantly higher for Dark-blood-DLR than for Dark-blood-HIR in all cervical arteries (all P < 0.001). Conclusion: Compared with Delayed-HIR CTA, the dark-blood method combined with DLR improved CTA image quality and enhanced visualization of the cervical artery wall in patients with TAK.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.241-249
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• 2009

Objectives : The purpose of this study is to report the patients with compressive neuropathy of the radial nerve(Saturday Night Palsy), who was improved by acupuncture and Sweet Bee Venom(SBV) treatment. Methods & Results : The patients were hospitalized or outpatient in Dept. of Acupuncture & Moxibustion, traditional korean medical hospital, Sangji University from 1st, Dec. 2008 to 30th June 2009, and treated with acupuncture, SBV, electrical stimulation therapy and herbal medication therapy. To evaluate the wrist drop and numbness of fingers, coding result(Arbitrary values used to evaluate result) and digital infrared thermal image, which was well defined diagnostic tool estimating skin surface temperature difference, were used. As a result, patient symptoms were improved remarkably. Conclusions : Patients were treated during 6 weeks in average. 2 cases were excellent and 1 case was evaluated good result by the acupuncture, Sweet Bee Venom, electrical stimulation therapy.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2017

According to living environment, the number of deaths due to thyroid diseases increased. In this paper, we proposed an algorithm for recognizing a thyroid detection using texture analysis based on shape, gray level co-occurrence matrix and gray level run length matrix. First of all, we segmented the region of interest (ROI) using active contour model algorithm. Then, we applied a total of 18 features (5 first order descriptors, 10 Gray level co-occurrence matrix features(GLCM), 2 Gray level run length matrix features and shape feature) to each thyroid region of interest. The extracted features are used as statistical analysis. Our results show that first order statistics (Skewness, Entropy, Energy, Smoothness), GLCM (Correlation, Contrast, Energy, Entropy, Difference variance, Difference Entropy, Homogeneity, Maximum Probability, Sum average, Sum entropy), GLRLM features and shape feature helped to distinguish thyroid benign and malignant. This algorithm will be helpful to diagnose of thyroid nodule on ultrasound images.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.265-272
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• 2022

As the risk of lung cancer has increased, early-stage detection and treatment of cancers have received a lot of attention. Among various medical imaging approaches, computer tomography (CT) has been widely utilized to examine the size and growth rate of lung nodules. However, the process of manual examination is a time-consuming task, and it causes physical and mental fatigue for medical professionals. Recently, many computer-aided diagnostic methods have been proposed to reduce the workload of medical professionals. In recent studies, encoder-decoder architectures have shown reliable performances in medical image segmentation, and it is adopted to predict lesion candidates. However, localizing nodules in lung CT images is a challenging problem due to the extremely small sizes and unstructured shapes of nodules. To solve these problems, we utilize atrous spatial pyramid pooling (ASPP) to minimize the loss of information for a general U-Net baseline model to extract rich representations from various receptive fields. Moreover, we propose mixed-up attention mechanism of reverse, boundary and convolutional block attention module (CBAM) to improve the accuracy of segmentation small scale of various shapes. The performance of the proposed model is compared with several previous attention mechanisms on the LIDC-IDRI dataset, and experimental results demonstrate that reverse, boundary, and CBAM (RB-CBAM) are effective in the segmentation of small nodules.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.6337-6340
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• 2013

Through retrospective analysis of 13 cases of magnetic resonance image (MRI) manifestations of atypical meningiomas confirmed by operation and pathology in the First Affiliated Hospital of Xinxiang Medical University, the objective of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic value of MRI in order to improve the accuracy rate of preoperative diagnosis. In this retrospective analysis of MRI findings for atypical meningiomas in First Affiliated Hospital of Xinxiang Medical University from January to July in 2012, the location, morphology and tumor signals and other tumor imaging characteristics were covered. In 13 cases of atypical meningioma patients of this group, most tumors were located at typical sites (10/13), mainly the falx cerebri, parasagittal, convexity, saddle area. Only two cases were at atypical locations, 1 in the cerebellar hemisphere and 1 in a lateral ventricle. Most of the tumors showed T1 and T2 isointensity signals, and necrosis, calcification, and peritumoral edema were always featured. DWI showed isointensity in 11 cases (11/13), and hyperintensity in 2. Some 9 cases had dural tail signs, 12 had accurate positioning (12/13), and 2 were postoperative recurrences. MRI has high value in the diagnosis of atypical meningiomas, with important roles in early clinical diagnosis, treatment and prognosis evaluation.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.351-360
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• 1998

Digital gamma camera has many advantages over analog gamma camera. These include convenient quality control, easy calibration and operation, and possible image quantitation which results in improving diagnostic accuracies. The digital data can also be utilized for telemedicine and picture archiving and communication system. However, many hospitals still operate analog cameras and have difficult situation to replace them with digital cameras. We have studied a feasibility of digitalizing an analog gamma camera into a digital camera using Gamma-PF interface board. The physical characteristics that we have measured are spatial resolution, sensitivity, uniformity, and image contrast. The patient's data obtained for both analog and digital camera showed very similar image quality. The results suggest that it may be feasible to upgrade an analog camera into a digital gamma camera in clinical environments.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2017.10a
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• pp.477-479
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• 2017

With the recent advances in medical technology and health care, the prevention and treatment of diseases has developed. Accordingly aging has rapidly progressed. In this life span and aging society, demand for diagnostic centered medical care is increasing rapidly. In this paper, we propose a wearable patient check system based on FPGA that can be controlled by sensors. In the existing hospital, a doctor or nurse visited the patient every hour to check the condition. However, in this paper, patients, doctors and nurses can check the patient's condition at the desired time using patient check system. In addition, the tilt sensor is used for the patient who is uncomfortable to easily control. The proposed FPGA-based hardware architecture consists of an algorithm for enlarged image processing, a TFT-LCD Controller, a CIS Controller, and a Memory Controller to output the patient's status image. Implemented and validated using the DE2-115 test board with Cyclone IV EP4CE115F29C7 FPGA device and its operating frequency is 50MHz.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.1119-1129
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• 2018

Objective: To compare the image quality of low-tube-voltage and low-iodine-concentration-contrast-medium (LVLC) computed tomography urography (CTU) with iterative reconstruction (IR) with that of conventional CTU. Materials and Methods: This prospective, multi-institutional, randomized controlled trial was performed at 16 hospitals using CT scanners from various vendors. Patients were randomly assigned to the following groups: 1) the LVLC-CTU (80 kVp and 240 mgI/mL) with IR group and 2) the conventional CTU (120 kVp and 350 mgI/mL) with filtered-back projection group. The overall diagnostic acceptability, sharpness, and noise were assessed. Additionally, the mean attenuation, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and figure of merit (FOM) in the urinary tract were evaluated. Results: The study included 299 patients (LVLC-CTU group: 150 patients; conventional CTU group: 149 patients). The LVLC-CTU group had a significantly lower effective radiation dose ($5.73{\pm}4.04$ vs. $8.43{\pm}4.38mSv$) compared to the conventional CTU group. LVLC-CTU showed at least standard diagnostic acceptability (score ${\geq}3$), but it was non-inferior when compared to conventional CTU. The mean attenuation value, mean SNR, CNR, and FOM in all pre-defined segments of the urinary tract were significantly higher in the LVLC-CTU group than in the conventional CTU group. Conclusion: The diagnostic acceptability and quantitative image quality of LVLC-CTU with IR are not inferior to those of conventional CTU. Additionally, LVLC-CTU with IR is beneficial because both radiation exposure and total iodine load are reduced.

• Korean Journal of Digital Imaging in Medicine
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.23-31
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• 2008

Computed radiography(CR) has been widely used in the field of diagnostic radiography since digital X-ray image was introduced. The imaging performance of CR system was studied by analyzing the digital image data of the CR images which are the outcomes of the whole imaging system composed of image plate(IP), laser digitizer, analoge-digital convertor, and a given image processing unit. In this study, we used a conventional CR system made by Agfa. From the flat field image of 150$\times$150 image pixels, signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) was calculated. SNR of the CR image increases in proportion to logarithm value of the X-ray exposure irradiated on the IP. SNR is less than about 6 at the exposure below 0.2mR and is more than 10 at the exposure above 0.54mR. In our study, most of images obtained by the smaller exposures less than 2.0mR can not be readable. In general, the minimum value of the SNR ranges from 3 to 5. We obtained modulation transfer function(MTF) by analyzing the bar pattern image which was made under conditions as follows: X-ray tube potential was 55kVp, the IP exposure was 0.54 mR, and the distance between X-ray source to IP was 2m, where bar pattern was located on the IP. MTF is 23% at 2.5lp/mm spatial frequency. Provided that the MTF of noise equivalent modulation is 10%, the CR system has the limiting spatial resolution of 3.2lp/mm. If the image sharpness is evaluated by the spatial frequency where MTF is 50%. the corresponding spatial frequency is 0.5$\sim$0.75lp/mm. MTFA(Modulation Transfer Function Area) is 1.0lp/mm. Compared with the Fuji CR whose MTFA is 1.1lp/mm, Agfa CR in this study shows almost same MTFA performance.