• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.299-304
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• 2001

Tribofilms formed on worn surface protect the DLC coating surface and decrease the friction coefficient. However it is very difficult to evaluate their micromechanical properties due to their small thickness, inhomogeneity and discontinuity. The phase contrast images in tapping mode atomic force microscopy allow an estimation of inhomogeneity in micromechanical properties of the sample surface. The purpose of this investigation is to demonstrate how the phase contrast images contribute to the characterization of thin tribofilms.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2019

Dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging plays an important role in non-invasive detection and characterization of primary and metastatic lesions in the liver. Recently, efforts have been made to improve spatial and temporal resolution of DCE liver MRI for arterial phase imaging. Review of recent publications related to arterial phase imaging of the liver indicates that there exist primarily two approaches: breath-hold and free-breathing. For breath-hold imaging, acquiring multiple arterial phase images in a breath-hold is the preferred approach over conventional single-phase imaging. For free-breathing imaging, a combination of three-dimensional (3D) stack-of-stars golden-angle sampling and compressed sensing parallel imaging reconstruction is one of emerging techniques. Self-gating can be used to decrease respiratory motion artifact. This article introduces recent MRI technologies relevant to hepatic arterial phase imaging, including differential subsampling with Cartesian ordering (DISCO), golden-angle radial sparse parallel (GRASP), and X-D GRASP. This article also describes techniques related to dynamic 3D image reconstruction of the liver from golden-angle stack-of-stars data.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.83-91
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• 2017

In this work, we investigated the recently proposed phase-contrast x-ray imaging (PCXI) technique, the so-called single grid-based PCXI, which has great simplicity and minimal requirements on the setup alignment. It allows for imaging of smaller features and variations in the examined sample than conventional attenuation-based x-ray imaging with lower x-ray dose. We performed a systematic simulation using a simulation platform developed by us to investigate the image characteristics. We also performed a preliminary PCXI experiment using an established a table-top setup to demonstrate the performance of the simulation platform. The system consists of an x-ray tube ($50kV_p$, 5 mAs), a focused-linear grid (200-lines/inch), and a flat-panel detector ($48-{\mu}m$ pixel size). According to our results, the simulated contrast of phase images was much enhanced, compared to that of the absorption images. The scattering length scale estimated for a given simulation condition was about 117 nm. It was very similar, at least qualitatively, to the experimental contrast, which demonstrates the performance of the simulation platform. We also found that the level of the phase gradient of oriented structures strongly depended on the orientation of the structure relative to that of linear grids.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.169-176
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• 2012

Tumor cell morphology is closely related to its migratory behaviors. An active tumor cell has a highly irregular shape, whereas a spherical cell is inactive. Thus, quantitative analysis of cell features is crucial to determine tumor malignancy or to test the efficacy of anticancer treatment. We use 3D time-lapse phase-contrast microscopy to analyze single cell morphology because it enables to observe long-term activity of living cells without photobleaching and phototoxicity, which is common in other fluorescence-labeled microscopy. Despite this advantage, there are image-level drawbacks to phase-contrast microscopy, such as local light effect and contrast interference ring. Therefore, we first corrected for non-uniform illumination artifacts and then we use intensity distribution information to detect cell boundary. In phase contrast microscopy image, cell is normally appeared as dark region surrounded by bright halo ring. Due to halo artifact is minimal around the cell body and has non-symmetric diffusion pattern, we calculate cross sectional plane which intersects center of each cell and orthogonal to first principal axis. Then, we extract dark cell region by analyzing intensity profile curve considering local bright peak as halo area. Finally, we calculated the Fourier descriptor that morphological characteristics of cell to classify tumor cells into active and inactive groups. We validated classification accuracy by comparing our findings with manually obtained results.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1997 no.05
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• pp.127-130
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• 1997

Phase-contrast(PC) methods have been used for quantitative measurements of velocity and volume flow rate. In addition, phase contrast cine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) combines the flow dependent contrast of PC MRI with the ability of cardiac cine imaging to produce images throughout the cardiac cycle. In this method, the through-plane velocity has been encoded generally. However, the accuracy of the flow data can be reduced by the effect of flow direction, finite slice thickness, resolution, pulsatile flow pattern, and so on. In this study we calculated the error caused by misalignment of tomographic plane and flow directon. To reduce this error and encode the velocity for more complex flow, we suggested 3 directional velocity encoding method.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.183-189
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• 2014

Purpose : Intravenous contrast medium is a substance used to enhance the contrast of normal tissues or malignant tissues within the body. For this reason, intravenous contrast media have been extensively used form treatment-planning CT. However, when the patient is receiving proton therapy, there is no contrast medium in that moment. In this study, evaluate the influence of intravenous contrast medium on proton range and Spread-Out Bragg peak(SOBP) in Treatment Planning System(TPS). Materials and Methods : Hounsfield Unit(HU) value were measured by 20 liver cancer patients with phase change. and evaluate the proton range and SOBP on 5 liver proton treatment plan. By using the hand made water phantom measure the proton range and SOBP on proton treatment plan with changing HU and Depth. Results : Changing value(Pre contrast, Arterial phase, Portal phase) in liver cancer patient were ($58{\pm}5.7$, $75{\pm}9.5$, $117{\pm}14.6$ for liver tissue) and ($40{\pm}6.1$, $279{\pm}49.0$, $154{\pm}22.8$ for aorta), respectively. The mean difference of range was 2.5mm and SOBP was 1.4mm according to HU change. In phantom study, proton range was shorter and SOBP was narrowed with increasing HU. Conclusion : We verify that HU change lead to range and SOBP change in TPS. Additional study is required to verify that change of HU make range and SOBP be changed in actual substance.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.247-254
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• 2007

This study was performed to identify the normal anatomic orientation of pulmonary arteries and to obtain the normal baseline parameters and the optimal contrast material delivery methods of computed tomographic pulmonary angiography (CTPA) on normal beagle dogs. Based on the contrast injection flow rate, the contrast volume, and the administration methods, the experimental groups were divided into 4 groups such as group 1 : 2 ml/s, 3 ml/kg, and monophasic administration; group 2 : 5 ml/s, 3 ml/kg, and monophasic administration; group 3 : 5 ml/s, 4 ml/kg, and monophasic administration; group 4 : 5 ml/s and 2 ml/kg in first phase, 0.3 ml/s and 2 ml/kg in second phase, as biphasic administration. Normal anatomic orientation of pulmonary arteries in CTPA was evaluated through reformatted and 3D images after retro-reconstruction. Normal parameters for great arteries and peripheral pulmonary arteries were obtained on the factor of basement hounsfield unit (HU) values, contrast enhanced HU values, delay time, and peak time. And the optimal contrast delivery methods were evaluated on the factor of contrast enhanced HU values, image quality, and artifact. The monophasic administration with 5 ml/s contrast injection flow rate and 3 ml/kg contrast volume was optimal in canine CTPA.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.109-109
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• 2001

Purpose： To assess the feasibility of sequential administration of ferumoxides and mangafodi trisodium in the same imaging protocols. Method： Thirty patients underwent double-contrast enhanced MR imaging of liver usi ferumoxides (Fe-MRI) and mangafodipir trisodium (Mn-MRI) on 1.5T GE Horizon system. In twenty patients, Mn-MRI was immediately followed by Fe-MRI. In ten patients, Fe-MR was performed first, then Mn-MRI was performed immediately, In all cases, precontras T1-weighted in-phase and opposed-phase spoiled gradient echo (GRE) images an T2-weighted fast spin-echo images (TR 4000ms, TE 102ms, ETL 8-12) were obtained Fe-MRI was performed with FSE and steady state GRE (TE 10 msec, flip angle 30 sequences. Mn-MRI was performed with in-phase and opposed-phase spoiled GR sequences. The SNR changes after the use of each contrast agents were calculated.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.175-180
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• 2016

In this study, we proposed an optical compensation method to improve the symmetricity of contrast ratio for wide viewing angle IPS (in-plane switching) LCD. First, the phase retardation depending on the thickness of compensation film is calculated, and then the phase change is presented at the $Poincar{\acute{e}}$ sphere. The phase retardation and the polarization state of the light passing through the optical elements are caculated by using the EJMM (extended Jones matrix method). In addition, the transmittance and the contrast countour are also calculated by using the Berremann's $4{\times}4$ matrix method. The simulation is carried out for a IPS LC cell with positive A/C/A compensation film. From the standard deviation of the contrast ratio, we confirmed the symmetricity at each viewing angle is inversely proportional to the standard deviation and calculated the optimum design condition of the uniaxial compensation film for the IPS LCD.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.261-268
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• 2023

We propose a compact differential interference contrast microscopic module, which enables snapshot measurements for quantitative phase imaging. The proposed module adopts the lateral shearing interferometric principle, which can obtain self-interference without a reference. Due to the absence of the reference, the system is more stable than the typical interferometric systems. It uses a polarization grating to generate two laterally shifted wavefronts based on its birefringence and polarizing beam-splitting characteristics. Furthermore, the use of a polarization camera does not require sequential measurements for the phase extraction. In the experiments, we observe and measure the timely varying changes of various specimens to verify the system performance with the bright field images and phase contrast images. Because the proposed microscopic module also has the merit of being adaptable to typical microscopy instead of using an imaging camera, it can conveniently replace conventional contrast microscopy.