• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.71-80
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• 2012

In order to verify exact dose distributions in the state-of-the-art radiation techniques, a newly designed three-dimensional dosimeter and technique has been took strongly into consideration. The main purpose of our study is to verify the optimized parameters of polymer gel as a real volumetric dosimeter in terms of the various study of MRI. We prepared a gel dosimeter by combing 8% of gelatin, 8% of MAA, and 10 mM of THPC. We used a Co-60 gamma-ray teletherapy unit and delivered doses of 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 Gy to each polymer gel with a solid phantom. We used a fast spin-echo pulse to acquire the characterized T2 time of MRI. The signal noise ratio (SNR) of the head & neck coil was a relatively lower sensitivity than the body coil; therefore the dose uncertainty of head & neck coil would be lower than body coil's. But the dose uncertainty and resolution of the head & neck coil were superior to the body coil in this study. The TR time between 1,500 ms and 2,000 ms showed no significant difference in the dose resolution, but TR of 1,500 ms showed less dose uncertainty. For the slice thickness of 2.5 mm, less dose uncertainty of TE times was at 4 Gy, as well, it was the lowest result over 4 Gy at TE of 12 ms. The dose uncertainty was not critical up to 6 Gy, but the best dose resolution was obtained at 20 ms up to 8 Gy. The dose resolution shows the lowest value was over 20 ms and was an excellent result in the number of excitation (NEX) of three. The NEX of two was the highest dose resolution. We concluded that the better result of slice thickness versus NEX was related to the NEX increment and thin slice thickness.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.143-152
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• 2015

In this study, we aim to design the architecture of the kV imaging system for tumor tracking in the dual-head gantry system and analyze its accuracy by simulations. We established mathematical formulas and algorithms to track the tumor position with the two-pair kV imaging systems when they are in the non-orthogonal positions. The algorithms have been designed in the homogeneous coordinate framework and the position of the source and the detector coordinates are used to estimate the tumor position. 4D XCAT (4D extended cardiac-torso) software was used in the simulation to identify the influence of the angle between the two-pair kV imaging systems and the resolution of the detectors to the accuracy in the position estimation. A metal marker fiducial has been inserted in a numerical human phantom of XCAT and the kV projections were acquired at various angles and resolutions using CT projection software of the XCAT. As a result, a positional accuracy of less than about 1mm was achieved when the resolution of the detector is higher than 1.5 mm/pixel and the angle between the kV imaging systems is approximately between $90^{\circ}$ and $50^{\circ}$. When the resolution is lower than 1.5 mm/pixel, the positional errors were higher than 1mm and the error fluctuation by the angles was greater. The resolution of the detector was critical in the positional accuracy for the tumor tracking and determines the range for the acceptable angle range between the kV imaging systems. Also, we found that the positional accuracy analysis method using XCAT developed in this study is highly useful and will be a invaluable tool for further refined design of the kV imaging systems for tumor tracking systems.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.100-112
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• 2001

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to establish optimal imaging acquisition conditions for the GE $Advance^{TM}$ PET imaging system by performing the acceptance tests designed by National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) protocol and General Electric Medical Systems (GEMS) test procedures. Materials and Methods: Performance tests were carried out with $^{18}FDG$ radioactivity source and phantoms by using a standard acquisition mode. Transaxial resolution and scatter traction tests were performed with a line source and axial resolution with a point source, respectively. A cylindrical phantom made of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) was used to measure sensitivity, count rate losses and randoms, uniformity correction, and attenuation inserts were added to measure remaining tests. The test results were acquired in a diagnostic acquisition mode and analyzed mainly on high sensitivity mode. Results: Transaxial resolution and axial resolution were measured as average of 4.65 mm and 3.98 mm at 0 cm, and 6.02 mm and 6.71 mm at 20 cm on high sensitivity mode, respectively. Average scatter fraction was 9.87%, and sensitivity was $225.8kcps/{\mu}Ci/cc$ of trues. Activity at 50% deadtime was $4.6{\mu}Ci/cc$, and the error of count rate correction at that activity was from 1.49% to 3.83%. Average nonuniformity for total slice w3s 8.37%. The accuracy of scatter correction was -0.95%. The accuracies of attenuation correction were 5.68% for air, 0.04% for water and -6.51% for polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). Conclusion: The results satisfied most acceptance criteria, indicating that the GE $Advance^{TM}$ PET system can be optimally used for clinical applications.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.103-112
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• 2001

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the current status of performing nuclear medicine quality control in korea and to test selected protocols of quality control of nuclear medicine counting system and gamma camera. Materials and Methods: Fifty three hospitals were included to investigate the current status of nuclear medicine quality control in korea. The precision of dose calibrator and thyroid uptake system was measured with Tc-99m 35.52 MBq for 2 minuets and Tc-99m 5.14 MBq for 10 sec every one minute, respectively. The sensitivity of CeraSPECT$^{TM}$ with low energy high resolution parallel hole collimator was measured using two cylindrical phantoms with 15 cm in diameter and 12 cm and 30 cm in heights containing Tc-99m. The correction factor for sensitivity of CeraSPECT$^{TM}$ was calculated using phantom data. The system planar sensitivity, uniformity, count rate and spatial resolution were measured for Varicam gamma camera with low energy high resolution parallel hole collimator using 140 keV centered 20% energy window, 256$\times$256 or 512$\times$512 matrix sizes. Results: The quality control of dose calibrator and well counter were showed poor performance status. On the other hand, The quality control of gamma camera and other systems were showed relatively good performance status. The results of precision of dose calibrator and thyroid uptake system was $\pm$1.4%(<$\pm$5%) and chi^2=29.7(>16.92), respectively. It showed that the sensitivity of CeraSPECT$^{TM}$ was higher in center slices compared with the edge slices. After correction of nonuniform sensitivities for patient data, it showed better results compare with prior to correction. System planar sensitivity of Varicam gamma camera was 4.39 CPM/MBq. The observed count rate at 20% loss was 102,407 counts/sec (head 1), 113,427 counts/sec (head 2), when input count rate was 81,926 counts/sec (head 1), 90,741 counts/sec (head 2). The spatial resolution without scatter medium were 8.16 mm of FWHM and 14.85 mm of FWTM. The spatial resolution with scatter medium were 8.87 mm of FWHM and 18.87 mm of FWTM. Conclusion: It is necessary to understand the importance of quality control and to perform quality control of nuclear medicine devices.vices.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.7-11
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• 2003

Currently, many hospitals are hastening to introduce digital radiography systems. This is a direct result of the intentions to improve medical services and to digitalize radiology information systems, and is also leading to the improvement of medical imaging technology. Throughout F/S system's long history, many people have researched the image quality and dosage concerning these systems, and as a result, huge improvements in the dosage of patients were possible. Similarly, I believe that DR systems need the same kind of effort. Of course, decreases in dosage that ignore image quality are unthinkable. The results of experiments conducted by five hospitals during a period of 3 months brought to us the conclusions listed below. 1. Based on the comparison and analysis of the exposure control of F/S systems and DR systems, DR systems generally showed higher exposure control for parts of the phantom that became thicker, and the exposure control improved rapidly as the thickness increased. 2. DR systems still proved to be somewhat deficient in resolution measurements compared to existing F/S systems. The image processing part of DR systems contributed much to these result. 3. Under conditions used clinically, the dosage measurements of DR systems were generally higher regardless of region. 4. According to the evaluation of image quality, DR systems showed a higher degree of satisfaction as the thickness of the region became thinner. As mentioned above and based on the mutual relationship experiments between the dosage and image quality of F/S systems and DR systems, research to increase the satisfaction of DR systems must be considered.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.104-107
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• 2004

In this study, using brain phantom for multi-modality imaging, we acquired CT, MR and PET images and performed registration of these anatomical images and nuclear medicine functional images. The algorithms and program applied for registration were Chamfer Matching and Mutual Information Maximization algorithm which have been using frequently in clinic and verified accuracy respectively. In result, both algorithms were useful methods for CT-MR, CT-PET and MR-PET. But Mutual Information Maximization was more effective algorithm for low resolution image as nuclear medicine functional image.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.449-458
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• 2007

In this paper, we reconstructed the cross-sectional images of two phantoms simulating a petrochemical process from gamma radiation measurements. Three different weight functions for EM image reconstruction algorithm were built and compared with histograms representing the variance of the homogeneity of the phantom material, The radiation source, $^{137}Cs$, collimated by a lead with 5 mm diameter aperture and the measurement was made with a lead shielded 1inch NaI detector. As a result, the method taking into account the beam area in each pixel for a weight function showed the best resolution among the three methods.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.253-260
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• 1989

The time domain methods of estimating the attenuation coefficient are generally based on the analysis of statisical properties of the reflected echoes form an attenuating medium. Hence, it is often required to have a large number of data samples in order to obtain a statistically stable estimation result. In the attenuation estimation problem, this means that many different speckle patterns are required in the spatial resolution volume of an attenLlation image. In this paper, by using the fact that the speckle pattern Is sensitive to the point spread function of the ultrasound beam, we suggest a method to generate the statiscally uncorrelated or slightly correlated data samples in a given region by rotating a linear transducer and carrying out lateral scans for all rotating angles. This technique is applied to the entropy method for attenuation estimation proposed recently by the authors where the performance is verified by experiments using a tissue equivalent phantom.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.260-262
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• 2002

An accurate measurement of dose distribution is indispensable to perform radiation therapy planning. A measurement technique using a radiographic film, which is called a film dosimetry, is widely used because it is easy to obtain a dose distribution with a good special resolution. In this study, we tried to develop an analyzing system for the film dosimetry using usual office automation equipments such as a personal computer and an image scanner. A film was sandwiched between two solid water phantom blocks (30 ${\times}$ 30 ${\times}$ 15cm). The film was exposed with Cobalt-60 ${\gamma}$-ray whose beam axis was parallel to the film surface. The density distribution on the exposed film was stored in a personal computer through an image scanner (8bits) and the film density was shown as the digital value with NIH-image software. Isodose curves were obtained from the relationship between the digital value and the absorbed dose calculated from percentage depth dose and absorbed dose at the reference point. The isodose curves were also obtained using an Isodose plotter, for reference. The measurements were carried out for 31cGy (exposure time: 120seconds) and 80cGy (exposure time: 300seconds) at the reference point. While the isodose curves obtained with our system were drawn up to 60% dose range for the case of 80cGy, the isodose curves could be drawn up to 80% dose range for the case of 31cGy. Furthermore, the isodose curves almost agreed with that obtained with the isodose plotter in low dose range. However, further improvement of our system is necessary in high dose range.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.120-127
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• 2000

Adaptive template filtering has been proposed recently for enhancement of signal-to-noise ratio without loss of resolution. In the adaptive template filtering, an optimal template among multiple templates is selected, then linear least square error filtering based on the template is applied in vowel by vowel basis. In some magnetic resonance imaging, where the distribution of gray level has relatively small dynamic range, e.g., $T_1$ imaging, however, artificial stair-like artifact is observed at near edges. This is partially due to the edge enhancement effect in such yokels that contain multiple compounds at the boundaries of tissues. The gray levels of these yokels become similar gray levels of near dominant vowels that contain single compound by the adaptive filtering, which enlarges edge discontinuities. In this paper, we propose a technique to eliminate such artifact by identifying those yokels that contain multiple compounds and assigning the largest template for them. Filtered images with the proposed technique show substantial visual enhancement at the edges without degradation of peak signal-to-noise ratio compared to the original adaptive template filtering for both magnetic resonance images and phantom images.