• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.1982-1990
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• 2022

The purpose of this study was to verify the possibility of fuel rod pattern analysis in a fresh fuel assembly using the Yonsei single-photon emission computed tomography (YSECT) system. The YSECT system consisted of three main parts: four trapezoidal-shaped bismuth germanate scintillator-based 64-channel detectors, a semiconductor-based multi-channel data acquisition system, and a rotary stage. In order to assess the performance of the prototype YSECT, tomographic images were obtained for three representative fuel rod patterns in the 6 × 6 array using two representative image-reconstruction algorithms. The fuel-rod patterns were then assessed using an in-house fuel rod pattern analysis algorithm. In the experimental results, the single-directional projection images for those three fuel-rod patterns well discriminated each fuel-rod location, showing a Gaussian-peak-shaped projection for a single 10 mm-diameter fuel rod with 12.1 mm full-width at half maximum. Finally, we successfully verified the possibility of the fuel rod pattern analysis for all three patterns of fresh fuel rods with the tomographic images obtained by the rotational YSECT system.

• Journal of Radiopharmaceuticals and Molecular Probes
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.93-98
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• 2021

meta-iodobenzylguanidine is one of the norepinephrine analogs and reuptakes together with norepinephrine with norepinephrine transporter. The radioiodinated ligand, ¹²³I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine, is the most widely used for single photon emission computed tomography imaging to diagnose functional abnormalities and tumors of the sympathetic nervous system. In this study, we performed cellular uptake studies of ¹²³I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine in positive- and negative-norepinephrine transporter cells in vitro to verify the uptake activity for norepinephrine transporter. After ¹²³I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine was injected via a tail vein into normal mice, Single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography images were acquired at 1 h, 4 h, and 24 h post-injection, and quantified the distribution in each organ including the adrenal medulla as a norepinephrine transporter expressing organ. In vitro cell study showed that ¹²³I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine specifically uptaked via norepinephrine transporter, and significant uptake of ¹²³I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine in the adrenal medulla in vivo single photon emission computed tomography images. These results demonstrated that single photon emission computed tomography imaging with ¹²³I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine were able to quantify the biodistribution in vivo in the adrenal medulla in normal mice.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.7
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• pp.2341-2347
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• 2021

Because single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is one of the widely used nuclear medicine imaging systems, it is extremely important to acquire high-quality images for diagnosis. In this study, we designed a super-resolution (SR) technique using dense block-based deep convolutional neural network (CNN) and evaluated the algorithm on real SPECT phantom images. To acquire the phantom images, a real SPECT system using a^99mTc source and two physical phantoms was used. To confirm the image quality, the noise properties and visual quality metric evaluation parameters were calculated. The results demonstrate that our proposed method delivers a more valid SR improvement by using dense block-based deep CNNs as compared to conventional reconstruction techniques. In particular, when the proposed method was used, the quantitative performance was improved from 1.2 to 5.0 times compared to the result of using the conventional iterative reconstruction. Here, we confirmed the effects on the image quality of the resulting SR image, and our proposed technique was shown to be effective for nuclear medicine imaging.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.776-780
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• 2017

To avoid imaging artifacts and interpretation mistakes, an improvement of the uniformity in gamma camera systems is a very important point. We can expect excellent uniformity using cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) photon counting detector (PCD) because of the direct conversion of the gamma rays energy into electrons. In addition, the uniformity performance such as integral uniformity (IU), differential uniformity (DU), scatter fraction (SF), and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) varies according to the energy window setting. In this study, we compared a PCD and conventional scintillation detector with respect to the energy windows (5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%) using a $^{99m}Tc$ gamma source with a Geant4 Application for Tomography Emission simulation tool. The gamma camera systems used in this work are a CZT PCD and NaI(Tl) conventional scintillation detector with a 1-mm thickness. According to the results, although the IU and DU results were improved with the energy window, the SF and CNR results deteriorated with the energy window. In particular, the uniformity for the PCD was higher than that of the conventional scintillation detector in all cases. In conclusion, our results demonstrated that the uniformity of the CZT PCD was higher than that of the conventional scintillation detector.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.35 no.8
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• pp.2367-2370
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• 2014

"Cat's eye"-shaped $[^{57}Co]CoO@SiO_2$ core-shell nanostructure was prepared by the reverse microemulsion method combined with radioisotope technique to investigate a potential imaging agent for a single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) in nuclear medicine. The core cobalt oxide nanorods were obtained by thermal decomposition of $Co-(oleate)_2$ precursor from radio isotope Co-57 containing cobalt chloride and sodium oleate. The $SiO_2$ coating on the surface of the core cobalt oxide nanorods was produced by hydrolysis and a condensation reaction of tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) in the water phase of the reverse microemulsion system. In vivo test, micro SPECT image was acquired with nude mice after 30 min of intravenous injection of $[^{57}Co]CoO@SiO_2$ core-shell nanostructure.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.18-24
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• 2004

SPECT technology is used for the reconstructed image in the field of industry noncontact measurement system. One of the distortion problems in reconstructed image quality is a collimator characterictic. The image distortion is caused by a geometrical structure of the collimator. This paper indicated a correction method to remove the image distortion by the structure of the collimator, and compared with the existing correction method. The correction. method removed the image distortion to use deconvolution of projection data with the shift-variant blurring function in the frequency domain. In this pater, I simulated with the collimator angle and distance between the detector and the center of object. and verified with expeimental data. The validity and limitation of correction method is studied for actual industrial applications.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.113-120
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• 1997

This paper presents an optimal design for the SPECT reconstruction filter, based on a physical limit of SPECT lesion detection capability. To increase the performance of the filter on lesion detectability, the filter design was focused on increasing the local SyW ratio of a threshold lesion, that was determined by minimum detectable lesion size (MDU) from SPECT lesion detectabllity contrast-detail curve. The proposed filter showed flexible window characteristics of resolution recovery and noise smoothing for MDLSs in the resolution-limited and photon-limited regions, respectively, compennting for the relative impact of the main limitation factors on threshold detectability. The simulated results showed good adaptability of the proposed filter to the changes in physical parameters of photon counts, object contrast, and detector system resolution.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.283-294
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• 2005

The Center for Imaging Human Structures (CIH) was established in December 2002 to develop new diagnostic imaging techniques and to make them available to the greater community of biomedical and clinical researchers at Sungkyunkwan University. CIH has been involved in 5 specific activities to provide solutions for early diagnosis and improved treatment of human diseases. The five area goals include: 1) development of a digital mammography system with computer aided diagnosis (CAD); 2) development of digital radiological imaging techniques; 3) development of unified medical solutions using 3D image fusion; 4) development of multi-purpose digital endoscopy; and, 5) evaluation of new imaging systems for clinical application

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.127-136
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• 2008

Monte Carlo simulation methods are especially useful in studying a variety of problems difficult to calculate by experimental or analytical approaches. Nowadays, they are extensively applied to simulate nuclear medicine instrumentations such as single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) for assisting system design and optimizing imaging and processing protocols. The goal of this paper is to address the practical issues, a potential user of Monte Carlo simulations for nuclear medicine can encounter, to help them to choose a code. This review introduces the different types of Monte Carlo codes currently available for nuclear medicine, comments main features and properties for a code to be proper for a given purpose, and discusses current research trends in Monte Carlo codes.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Simulation Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.118-122
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• 2004

본 논문에서는 인체의 머리 부분을 촬영한 의료 영상에서 뇌 영역만을 분할하는 방법에 대해 제시하고자 한다. 뇌의 해부학적 구조 및 기능적 이상 부위를 파악할 경우에 영상 내에 함께 보여지는 두개골과 뇌척수액 등을 제외한 대뇌피질 영역을 분할하면 보다 효과적인 정보 분석 및 진단이 가능하게 된다. 본 시스템에서는 3단계 알고리즘을 제시한다. 첫 번째 단계에서는 영상 내에 존재하는 잡음을 제거하기 위한 필터링이고, 두 번째 단계에서는 필터링된 결과에 대한 영상분할을 수행하는 것이다 이 때 정확한 결과 도출을 위하여 사용자의 인터렉션이 들어가게 된다. 세번째 단계에서는 형태학적 방법을 이용하여 분할 결과를 보완한다. 본 연구를 위한 실험에는 자기 공명 촬영 영상(MRI: Magnetic Resonance Imaging), 단일 광전자 방출 단층 촬영영상(SPECT: Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography), 양전자 방출 단층 촬영영상(PET: Positron Emission Tomography) 등을 사용하였다. 본 시스템에서는 다양한 모달리티의 뇌 영상에서 대뇌피질 부분을 정확하게 영상 분할함으로써 뇌의 구조적 이상을 판단하기 위한 해부학적 정보 분석을 가능케 하고 있다. 뿐만 아니라 뇌 질환에 대한 정확한 진단 시뮬레이션도 가능하게 하고자 한다.