• Laser Solutions
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.35-41
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• 2003

In this study, manufacturing of polymer master and mold insert for micro injection molding was investigated. Ablation by excimer laser radiation could be used successfully to make 3-D microstructure of PET. The mechanism for ablative decomposition of PET with KrF excimer laser(λ: 248nm, pulse duration: 5ns) was explained by photochemical process. And this process showed PET to be adopted in polymer master for nickel mold insert. Nickel electroforming by using laser ablated PET master was preferable for replication method. Finally, it was shown that excimer laser ablation can substitute for X-ray lithography of LIGA process in microstructuring.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.93-97
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• 2016

In this study, we evaluate the effect of respiration on the dose distribution in patient target volume (PTV) during intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and research methods to reduce this impact. The dose distributions, homogeneity index (HI), coverage index (CVI), and conformity index of the PTV, which is calculated from the dose-volume histogram (DVH), are compared between the maximum intensity projection (MIP) image-based plan and other images at respiration phases of 30%, 60% and 90%. In addition, the reducing effect of complication caused by patient respiration is estimated in the case of a bolus and the expended PTV on the skin. The HI is increased by approximately twice, and the CVI is relatively decreased without the bolus at other respiration phases. With the bolus and expended PTV, the change in the dose distribution of the PTV is relatively small with patient respiration. Therefore, the usage of the bolus and expended PTV can be considered as one of the methods to improve the accuracy of IMRT in the treatment of breast cancer patients with respiratory motion.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.389-395
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• 2013

This study intended to investigate the optimum conditions for lumbar test that has the highest level of irradiation conditions among general test sites. To to this, the most widely used irradiation conditions in terms of statistics were set as standards; test groups applied with DMF were selected; tests groups suitable for clinical trials were selected by using suggested patient dose. Blind tests were conducted by 10 specialists and radiologists. The results suggested that under the optimum conditions, the radiation dose reduction of 2.09 mGy, 4.42 mGy and 3.65 mGy can be achieved in forward-backward test, lateral test and 4-direction test, respectively. There is a need of further studies on the optimization of irradiation conditions in accordance with the conditions of patients.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.464-472
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• 2005

Purpose: SPECT using a fan-beam collimator improves spatial resolution and sensitivity. For the reconstruction from fan-beam projections, it is necessary to implement direct fan-beam reconstruction methods without transforming the data into the parallel geometry. In this study, various fan-beam reconstruction algorithms were implemented and their performances were compared. Materials and Methods: The projector for fan-beam SPECT was implemented using a ray-tracing method. The direct reconstruction algorithms implemented for fan-beam projection data were FBP (filtered backprojection), EM (expectation maximization), OS-EM (ordered subsets EM) and MAP-EM OSL (maximum a posteriori EM using the one-step late method) with membrane and thin-plate models as priors. For comparison, the fan-beam protection data were also rebinned into the parallel data using various interpolation methods, such as the nearest neighbor, bilinear and bicubic interpolations, and reconstructed using the conventional EM algorithm for parallel data. Noiseless and noisy projection data from the digital Hoffman brain and Shepp/Logan phantoms were reconstructed using the above algorithms. The reconstructed images were compared in terms of a percent error metric. Results: for the fan-beam data with Poisson noise, the MAP-EM OSL algorithm with the thin-plate prior showed the best result in both percent error and stability. Bilinear interpolation was the most effective method for rebinning from the fan-beam to parallel geometry when the accuracy and computation load were considered. Direct fan-beam EM reconstructions were more accurate than the standard EM reconstructions obtained from rebinned parallel data. Conclusion: Direct fan-beam reconstruction algorithms were implemented, which provided significantly improved reconstructions.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.191-197
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• 2013

Conventional CT and MRI scans produce cross-section slices of body that are viewed sequentially by radiologists who must imagine or extrapolate from these views what the 3 dimensional anatomy should be. By using sophisticated algorithm and high performance computing, these cross-sections may be rendered as direct 3D representations of human anatomy. The 2D medical image analysis forced to use time-consuming, subjective, error-prone manual techniques, such as slice tracing and region painting, for extracting regions of interest. To overcome the drawbacks of 2D medical image analysis, combining with medical image processing, 3D visualization is essential for extracting anatomical structures and making measurements. We used the gray-level thresholding, region growing, contour following, deformable model to segment human organ and used the feature vectors from texture analysis to detect harmful cancer. We used the perspective projection and marching cube algorithm to render the surface from volumetric MR and CT image data. The 3D visualization of human anatomy and segmented human organ provides valuable benefits for radiation treatment planning, surgical planning, surgery simulation, image guided surgery and interventional imaging applications.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.281-290
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• 2010

Cone-beam digital tomosynthesis (CBDT) has greatly been paid attention in the image-guided radiation therapy because of its attractive advantages such as low patient dose and less motion artifact. Image quality of tomograms is, however, dependent on the imaging conditions such as the scan angle (${\beta}_{scan}$) and the number of projection views. In this paper, we describe the principle of CBDT based on filtered-backprojection technique and investigate the optimization of imaging conditions. As a system performance, we have defined the figure-of-merit with a combination of signal difference-to-noise ratio, artifact spread function and floating-point operations which determine the computational load of image reconstruction procedures. From the measurements of disc phantom, which mimics an impulse signal and thus their analyses, it is concluded that the image quality of tomograms obtained from CBDT is improved as the scan angle is wider than 60 degrees with a larger step scan angle (${\Delta}{\beta}$). As a rule of thumb, the system performance is dependent on $\sqrt{{\Delta}{\beta}}{\times}{\beta}^{2.5}_{scan}$. If the exact weighting factors could be assigned to each image-quality metric, we would find the better quantitative imaging conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.37-46
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• 2023

This study aims to evaluate the usefulness of Deep Learning Image Reconstruction (TrueFidelity, TF), the image quality of existing Filtered Back Projection (FBP) and Adaptive Statistical Iterative Reconstruction-Veo (ASIR-V) were compared. Noise, CNR, and SSIM were measured by obtaining images with doses fixed at 17.29 mGy and altered to 10.37 mGy, 12.10 mGy, 13.83 mGy, and 15.56 mGy in reconstruction techniques of FBP, ASIR-V 50%, and TF-H. TF-H has superior image quality compared to FBP and ASIR-V when the reconstruction technique change is given at 17.29 mGy. When dose changes were made, Noise, CNR, and SSIM were significantly different when comparing 10.37 mGy TF-H and FBP (p<0.05), and no significant difference when comparing 10.37 mGy TF-H and ASIR-V 50% (p>0.05). TF-H has a dose-reduction effect of 30%, as the highest dose of 15.56 mGy ASIR-V has the same image quality as the lowest dose of 10.37 mGy TF-H. Thus, Deep Learning Reconstruction techniques (TF) were able to reduce dose compared to Iterative Reconstruction techniques (ASIR-V) and Filtered Back Projection (FBP). Therefore, it is considered to reduce the exposure dose of patients.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.56-65
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• 2009

Compton imaging is often recognized as a potentially more valuable 3-D technique in nuclear medicine than conventional emission tomography. Due to inherent computational limitations, however, it has been of a difficult problem to reconstruct images with good accuracy. In this work we show that the row-action maximum likelihood algorithm (RAMLA), which have proven useful for conventional tomographic reconstruction, can also be applied to the problem of 3-D reconstruction of cone-beam projections from Compton scattered data. The major advantage of RAMLA is that it converges to a true maximum likelihood solution at an order of magnitude faster than the standard expectation maximiation (EM) algorithm. For our simulations, we first model a Compton camera system consisting of the three pairs of scatterer and absorber detectors placed at x-, y- and z-axes, and generate conical projection data using a software phantom. We then compare the quantitative performance of RAMLA and EM reconstructions in terms of the percentage error. The net conclusion based on our experimental results is that the RAMLA applied to Compton camera reconstruction significantly outperforms the EM algorithm in convergence rate; while computational costs of one iteration of RAMLA and EM are about the same, one iteration of RAMLA performs as well as 128 iterations of EM.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.847-856
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• 2007

The Planetary nebula NGC 6881 displays quadrupole morphology and it also has a jet feature in its image. We investigated the line profiles of the optical region spectral emission lines, using the Hamilton Echelle Spectrograph (HES) at the Lick observatory. The HES data obtained in this study was the radiation coming from the inner region within the diameter of 4 second of arc. Expansion velocity was obtained, based on the strong emission line profiles of e.g. H, Hel, Hell, [OIII], [NII], [ArIII], [SII], and [SIII}, using the IRAF and StarLink/Dipso reduction packages. The HI recombination lines showed one single peak profile, while the He and forbidden strong lines displayed double peaks. The results of this study show that the outflow velocity of gas increases radially outwards due to the central stellar radiation pressure. It was concluded that three central rings appeared in the HST image are the result of a combined structure of bipolar cones (seen in e.g. HI lines) and a ring (seen in He, [SIII] lines) in projection.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.520-529
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• 2007

An efficient method for implementing image reconstruction algorithms for Compton cameras is presented. Since Compton scattering formula establishes a cone surface from which the incident photon must have originated, it is crucial to implement a computationally efficient cone-surface integration method for image reconstruction. In this paper we assume that a cone is made up of a series of ellipses (or circles) stacked up one on top of the other. In order to reduce computational burden for tracing ellipses formed by the intersection of a cone and an image plane, we propose a new method using a series of imaginary planes perpendicular to the cone axis so that each plane contains a circle, not an ellipse. In this case the cone surface integral can be performed by simply accumulating the circles along the cone axis. To reduce the computational cost of tracing circles, only one of the circles in the cone is traced and the rest are determined by using simple trigonometric ratios. For our experiments, we used the three different schemes for tracing ellipses; (i) using the samples generated by the ellipse equation, (ii) using the fixed number of samples along a circle on the imaginary plane, and (iii) using the fixed sampling interval along a circle on the imaginary plane. We then compared performance of the above three methods by applying them to the two reconstruction algorithms - the simple back-projection method and the expectation-maximization algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed methods (ii) and (iii) using imaginary planes significantly improve reconstruction accuracy as well as computational efficiency.