• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.95-101
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• 2007

Recently, small-animal imaging technology has been rapidly developed for longitudinal screening of laboratory animals such as mice and rats. One of newly developed imaging modalities for small animals is an x-ray micro-CT (computed tomography). We have developed two types of x-ray micro-CT systems for small animal imaging. Both systems use flat-panel x-ray detectors and micro-focus x-ray sources to obtain high spatial resolution of $10{\mu}m$. In spite of the relatively large field-of-view (FOV) of flat-panel detectors, the spatial resolution in the whole-body imaging of rats should be sacrificed down to the order of $100{\mu}m$ due to the limited number of x-ray detector pixels. Though the spatial resolution of cone-beam CTs can be improved by moving an object toward an x-ray source, the FOV should be reduced and the object size is also limited. To overcome the limitation of the object size and resolution, we introduce zoom-in micro-tomography for high-resolution imaging of a local region-of-interest (ROI) inside a large object. For zoom-in imaging, we use two kinds of projection data in combination, one from a full FOV scan of the whole object and the other from a limited FOV scan of the ROI. Both of our micro-CT systems have zoom-in micro-tomography capability. One of both is a micro-CT system with a fixed gantry mounted with an x-ray source and a detector. An imaged object is laid on a rotating table between a source and a detector. The other micro-CT system has a rotating gantry with a fixed object table, which makes whole scans without rotating an object. In this paper, we report the results of in vivo small animal study using the developed micro-CTs.

• Advances in nano research
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.145-156
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• 2016

Dendrimers are one of the most appropriate nanocaries for imaging moieties in imaging applications.The purpose of this study was the evalution of cytotoxicity and inducing apoptosis of dendrimers. This study was conducted in order to investigate the metastasis suppression effect of dendrimer in human breast MCF-7 cell line and finding the nanoparticle protein corona in biological enviromental. Dendrimer cytotoxicity effect was assessed by MTT assay. The mRNA experession level of KAI1 as a metastasis suppressor gene, Bax as Pro- apoptotic gene, Bcl-2 as an anti-apoptotic gene and GAPDH as a housekepping gene were determined by real-time PCR assays.concentration-dependent nanoparticle cytotoxicity effect was proofed at range of 1-2 mg/mL in 24 hours, significant upregulation of mRNA expression of Bax, was observed whereas expression of anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 was down-regulated, also expression of metastasis suppressor gene KAI1 was up-regulated. So far a few studies confirmed apoptosis enhancement effect of dendrimers in MCF-7 cell line via bax/bcl-2 pathways. dendrimer nanoparticles was able to act as metastase inhibitor via upregulation of KAI1 gene.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.41-44
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• 1986

The objective of tissue characterization is to provide quantitative information about the physical state of tissue interrogated by an ultrasound beam. In the computer simulation, it was found that the echoes were composed of the interferences of the ultrasonic waves reflected from both sides of the thin object, and could be separated by the spectral correlation method. Also, the phantom study demonstrates that thickness of the thin acryl layer beyond the resolution of common ultrasonic imaging systems can be measured- using this method.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.72-77
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• 2012

Phase Contrast MR Angiography(PC MRA) is excellent MRA technique for measuring the velocity of vessels in the human body. PC MRA need to at least four images for angiogram reconstruction and it caused longer scan time. Therefore, we used keyhole imaging combined PC MRA to reduce the scan time. However, keyhole imaging can lead the erroneous effects as loss of phase information or frequency discontinuous. In this study, we applied the keyhole imaging combined 2D PC MRA for improving the temporal resolution and also measured the velocity to evaluate the accuracy of phase information. We used 0.32T MRI scanner(Magfinder II, Scimedix, Korea). Using the 2D PC MRA pulse sequence, the vascular images for a human brain targeted on the Superior Sagittal Sinus(SSS) were obtained. We applied tukey window function for keyhole images to minimize the ringing artifact and erroneous factors that are induced frequency discontinuous and phase information loss. We also applied zero-padded algorithm to peripheral missing k-space lines to compare keyhole imaging results and the artifact power(AP) value was measured on the complex difference images to validate the image quality. Consider as based on our results, heavy image distortions and artifacts were shown until using at least 50% keyhole factor. Using above the 50% keyhole factors are shown well reconstructed and matched for magnitude images and velocity information measurements. In conclusion, we confirmed the image quality and velocity information of keyhole technique combined 2D PC MRA. Especially, measured velocity information through the keyhole imaging combination was similar to the velocity information of full sampled k-space image despite of frequency discontinuous and phase information loss in the keyhole imaging reconstruction process. Consequently, the keyhole imaging combined 2D PC MRA will give some clinical usefulness and advantages as improving the temporal resolution and measuring the velocity information via selecting the appropriate keyhole factor at low tesla MRI system.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1997 no.05
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• pp.457-460
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• 1997

The photoconductive gain mechanism in various types of hydrogenated amorphous silicon devices, such as p-i-n, n-i-n and n-i-p-i-n structures was investigated in connection with applications to radiation detection. We measured the photoconductive gain in two time scales: one for short pulses of visible light $(<1{\mu}sec)$ which simulate the transit of energetic charged particles, and the other for rather long pulses of light $(\sim1msec)$ which simulate x-ray exposure in medical imaging. We used two definitions of photoconductive gain: current gain and charge gain which is an integration of the current gain. We found typical charge gains of $3\sim9$ for short pulses and a few hundred for long pulses at a dark current density level of $10mA/cm^2$.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.53-58
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• 2006

In this study, transverse relaxation time (T2) measurement and the evaluation of the characteristics of the spectral peak related to stomach tissue metabolites were performed using ex vivo proton magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) at 1.5-T MRI/S instruments. Thirty-two gastric tissues resected from 12 patients during gastric cancer surgery, of which 19 were normal tissue and 13 were cancerous tissue, were used to measure the $T_2$ of the magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) peaks. The volume of interest data results from the MRSI measurements were extracted from the proper muscle (MUS) layer and the composite mucosa/submucosa (MC/SMC) layer and were statistically analyzed. MR spectra were acquired using the chemical shift imaging (CSI) point resolved spectroscopy (CSI-PRESS) technique with the parameters of pulse repetition time (TR) and echo times (TE) TR/(TE1,TE2)=1500 msec/(35 msec, 144 msec), matrix $size=24{\times}24$, NA=1, and voxel $size=2.2{\times}2.2{\times}4mm^3$. In conclusion, the measured $T_2$ of the metabolite peaks, such as choline (3.21ppm) and lipid (1.33ppm), were significantly decreased (p<0.01 and p<0.05, respectively) in the cancerous stomach tissue.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.91-96
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• 2007

Panic disorder is a common psychiatric illness that causes considerable morbidity. However, the biological basis of panic disorder remains unclear. In this report, we present and summarize the current literature on functional neuroimaging studies related to the neurobiology of panic disorder. The findings were summarized and divided into six groups : (1) known brain structures related to anxiety, especially panic disorder ; (2) structural results ; (3) functional imaging studies at rest ; (4) functional imaging studies with challenge testing ; (5) neuroreceptor studies ; and (6) changes in the treatment of panic disorder. Based on the findings of these neuroimaging studies, it seems as though panic disorder involves the hippocampal and parahippocampal areas, including the amygdala, as well as some cortical regions, such as the temporal and prefrontal cortices. Panic disorder is known to be associated with an imbalance between the right and left hemispheres of the brain at rest or during panic attacks. During a panic attack, patients with panic disorder are likely to experience an increase in local activity in the cingulate, insula, midbrain, and so on. On the other hand, a widespread reduction in the cortical areas has also been reported in most provocation studies. Thus, panic disorder may be related to the excess activation of the fear networks in response to subtle environmental cues and insufficient inhibition from higher cortical control areas ; however ; further studies are recommended in order to fully understand the neurobiology of panic disorder.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1993 no.11
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• pp.23-26
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• 1993

In MR functional imaging, it is shown that the signal change during photic activation is composed of two terms, i.e. the inflow effect and the susceptibility effect. Relatively the inflow effect affects the data obtained by CGE on the condition of short $T_E$(15ms) and large $\alpha$(90degree). The susceptibility effect, however, mainly contributes to the data on the condition of large $T_E$(35ms) and small $\alpha$(30degree). In this apper, we will discriminate the susceptibility effect for the intermingled data affected both flow effect and susceptibility effect. Finally susceptibility only functional imaging is proposed by using TRFGE.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.201-208
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• 1994

Many three-dimensional object modeling and display methods for computer graphics and computer vision have been developed. Recently, with the help of medical imaging devices such as computerized tomography, magnetic resonance image, etc., some of those object modeling and display methods have been widely used for capturing the shape, structure and other properties of real objects in many medical applications. In this paper, we propose the reconstruction and display method of the three-dimensional object from a series of the cross sectonal image. It is implemented by using the automatic threshold selection method and the contour following algorithm. The combination of curvature and distance, we select feature points. Those feature points are the candidates for the tiling method. As a results, it is proven that this proposed method is very effective and useful in the comprehension of the object's structure. Without the technician's responce, it can be automated.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1998 no.11
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• pp.275-276
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• 1998

In this paper, we present the software on the development of the computerized imaging system for diagnosis and treatment plannig of orthodontics and orthognathic surgery. Soft tissue changes followed by orthognathic surgery mainly depends on surgical movements of hard tissue. Then, the stepwise multiple regression method was used to investigate the soft tissue changes followed by hard tissue changes. As a result of this research, we were able to develop a system which diagnoses automatic X-ray images and predicts soft tissue changes after othognathic surgery.