• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 1996.06c
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• pp.334-343
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• 1996

Quality evaluation for food and agricultural products have always been one of the most elusive problems associated with the handling , processing and marketing in a food plant production. In order to detect physical foreign materials in food and agricultural products, non-destructive techniques have been developed for many years. Application of X-ray system to detect physical foreign materials in food and agricultural products could be considered to be a high potential method. Especially , it is impossible to detect internal physical foreign materials by visual inspections. In this study, it was tried to be applied for two different X-ray devices. Soft X-ray system with CdTe sensor and X-ray CT scanner were evaluated for advantage of the detection of non-meltallic foreign materials in food and agricultural products . Though the soft X-ray is not a high energy radiation, it is possible to detect small different density in a material. The CdTe sensor has a high resolution for t e soft X-ray energy region. The density characteristics of foods and foreign material were expressed region. The density characteristics of foods and foreign materials were expressed as a soft X-ray energy spectrum. The energy spectrum was analyzed by a personal computer with a multi-channel analyzer. X-ray CT scanner can provide visual image and analyze by three dimensional information inside food and agricultural products. The X-ray CT scanner using as a medical equipment was used to detect a foreign material. The density characteristics of food and foreign materials in food were tried to be detected by the threshold value on the basis of the CT numbers. The soft X-ray absorption characteristics for acrylin plates and distilled water were obtained and could be found the possibility of detecting a small physical foreign materials such as a plastic wrapping film , a stone and grasshopper in food and agricultural products.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.407-410
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• 2002

Monochromatic x-ray CT has several advantages over conventional CT, which utilizes bremsstrahlung white x-rays from an x-ray tube. There are several methods to produce such monochromatic x-rays. The most popular one is crystal diffraction monochromatization, which has been commonly used because of the fact that the energy spread is very narrow and the energy can be changed continuously. The alternative method is the use of fluorescent x-ray, which has several advantages such as large beam size and fast energy change. We have developed a parallel-beam and a fan-beam monochromatic x-ray CT, and compared some characteristics such as accuracy of CT numbers between those systems. The fan beam monochromatic x-rays were generated by irradiating target materials by incident white x-rays from a bending magnet beam line NE5 in 6.5 GeV Accumulation Ring at Tukuba. The parallel beam monochromatic x-rays were generated by using a silicon double crystal monochromator at the bending magnet beam line BL-20BM in Spring-8. A Cadmium telluride (CdTe) 256 channel array detector with 512mm sensitive width capable of operating at room temperature was used in the photon counting mode. A cylindrical phantom containing eight concentrations of gadolinium was used for the fan beam monochromatic x-ray CT system, while a phantom containing acetone, ethanol, acrylic and water was used for the parallel monochromatic x-ray CT system. The linear attenuation coefficients obtained from CT numbers of those monochromatic x-ray CT images were compared with theoretical values. They showed a good agreement within 3%. It was found that the quantitative measurement can be possible by using the fan beam monochromatic x-ray CT system as well as a parallel beam monochromatic X-ray CT system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.879-880
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• 2012

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.23-31
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• 2006

X-ray transit materials with straight path and the its intensity is proportional to the density of materials. Therefore, X-ray has been extensively used as a nondestructive evaluation (NDE) method in various fields. This study was carried out for development of a portable X-ray CT (computed-tomography) system to detect deteriorations of wood members in buildings. Based on the results of our previous study, a procedure of CT image reconstruction was established In order to verify the applicability of developed system, CT images of three wood disks were reconstructed by newly developed procedure and compared with the prototypes. From the results of this study, it was shown that the newly developed system could be used not only to determine the shape, size, and position of defects, but also to find the density distribution in cross section of wood structure members. The density distribution may be utilized to clarify the reason of wood deterioration and to provide the preventive method on how to treat or repair wood buildings. Because it was initial stage of system development, there were some limitations concerned with measuring equipment and image reconstruction algorithm. Especially, measuring time including equipment setup time was longer and measuring accuracy was lower than we expected. Therefore, we planned some additional studies on improvement of equipment and algorithm to enhance the capability of X-ray CT system.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.43-47
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• 2005

We have developed a small bore x-ray CT for small animal imaging with a linear x-ray detector array and small-scale slip rings. The linear x-ray detector array consists of 1024 elements of 400□m×400□m with a gadolinium oxysulfide (GOS) scintillator on top of them. To avoid use of expensive large diameter slip rings for projection data transmission from the X­ray detector to the image reconstruction system, we used the wireless LAN technology. The projection data are temporally stored in the data acquisition system residing on the rotating gantry during the scan and they are transmitted to the image reconstruction system after the scan. With the wireless LAN technology, we only needed to use small-scale slip rings to deliver the AC electric power to the X-ray generator and the power supply on the rotating gantry. The performances of the small animal CT system, such as SNR, contrast, and spatial resolution, have been evaluated through experiments using various phantoms. It has been experimentally found that the SNR is almost linearly proportional to the tube current and tube voltage, and the minimum resolvable contrast is less than 30 CT numbers at 40kVp/3.0㎃. The spatial resolution of the small animal CT system has been found to be about 0.9Ip/㎜. Postmortem images of a piglet is also presented.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.139-148
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• 1999

In this paper, we designed the dental surgery system based on PC. This system predict post operated 3-dimensional image, So the patient has no need to take CT after surgery and expose his body to radiological damage. We predict the post operated skull from the patient's CT with pre and post cephalometry X-ray. Our novel procedures, to register X-ray and CT, are based on anatomical landmarks, singular value decomposition. And we display the predicted image 3-dimensionally by surface rendering. We verified this system by dry skull experiment and clinical experiment. When significance level is 0.05, there is on significance.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.97-102
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• 2004

We developed an x-ray cone-beam micro computed tomography (micro-CT) system for small-animal imaging. The micro-CT system consists of a 2-D flat-panel x-ray detector with a field-of-view (FOV) of 120${\times}$120 mm2, a micro-focus x-ray source, a scan controller and a parallel image reconstruction system. Imaging performances of the micro-CT system have been evaluated in terms of contrast and spatial resolution. The minimum resolvable contrast has been found to be less than 36 CT numbers at the dose of 95 mGy and the spatial resolution about 14 lp/mm. As small animal imaging results, we present high resolution 3-D images of rat organs including a femur, a heart and vessels. We expected that the developed micro-CT system can be greatly used in biomedical studies using small animals.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.411-414
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• 2002

The CdTe semiconductor detector has a higher detection efficiency for x-rays and $\square$amma rays and a wider energy band gap compared with Si and Ge semiconductor detectors. Therefore, the size of the detector element can be made small, and can be operated at room temperature. The interaction between a CdTe detector and incident x-rays is mainly photoelectric absorption in the photon energy range of up to 100 keV. In this energy range, Compton effects are almost negligible. We have developed a 256 channel CdTe array detector system for monochromatic x-ray CT using synchrotron radiation. The CdTe array detector system, the element size of which is 1.98 mm (h) x 1.98 mm (w) x 0.5 mm (t), was operated in photon counting mode. In order to improve the spatial resolution, we tilted the CdTe array detector against the incident parallel monochromatic x-ray beam. The experiments were performed at the BL20B2 experimental hutch in SPring-8. The energy of incident monochromatic x-rays was set at 55 keV. Phantom measurements were performed at the detector angle of 0, 30 and 45 degrees against the incident parallel monochromatic x-rays. The linear attenuation coefficients were calculated from the reconstructed CT images. By increasing the detector angle, the spatial resolutions were improved. There was no significant difference between the linear attenuation coefficients which were corrected by the detector angle. It was found that this method was useful for improving the spatial resolution in a parallel monochromatic x-ray CT system.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2006

ln order to manage efficiently many ancient wooden buildings, which have been preserved as cultural properties in Korea, the internal state of wood members should be evaluated exactly and periodically by a NDE (non-destructive evaluation) method. A research project was planned to develop an X-ray CT (computed tomography) system as a NDE method for wood, which could be easily applied in field. This paper includes the first part of this project. First of all, to establish a measuring procedure of wood density using X-ray radiography, the correlation between X-ray intensity and the film brightness was evaluated. Also, initial X-ray intensity was quantified with various radiate conditions controlled by the tube voltage and tube current. And then, the effects of density, annual ring angle, and thickness on the mass attenuation coefficient of wood were examined. Finally, Beer's law was modified with the above results and adopted to calculate the density of wood. As a result of this study, the measuring procedure of wood density was established using a portable soft X-ray device and this procedure was verified with some small wood specimens. This results will he used valuably for the following researches to develop a portable X-ray CT system.