• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.2
• /
• pp.507-513
• /
• 2022

When X-ray energy above 8 MV is used, photoneutrons are generated by the photonuclear reaction, which activates the components of linear accelerator (linac). Safely managing the radioactive material, when disposing linac or replacing components, is difficult, as the standards for the radioactive material management are not clear in Korea. We surveyed the management status of radioactive components occurred from medical linacs in Korea. And we also measured the activation of each part of the discarded Elekta linac using a survey meter and portable High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector. We found that most medical institutions did not perform radiation measurements when disposing of radioactive components. The radioactive material was either stored within the institution or collected by the manufacturer. The surface dose rate measurements showed that the parts with high surface dose rates were target, primary collimator, and multileaf collimator (MLC). ⁶⁰Co nuclide was detected in most parts, whereas for the target, ⁶⁰Co and ¹⁸⁴Re nuclides were detected. Results suggest that most institutions in Korea did not have the regulations for disposing radioactive waste from linac or the management procedures and standards were unclear. Further studies are underway to evaluate short-lived radionuclides and to lay the foundation for radioactive waste management from medical linacs.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.83 no.4
• /
• pp.846-860
• /
• 2022

Persistent left superior vena cava (PLSVC) is a rare congenital, thoracic, and vascular anomaly. Although PLSVCs generally do not have a hemodynamic effect, several types of PLSVC and some cardiac anomalies may manifest with clinical symptoms. The presence of PLSVC can render catheterization via left subclavian access difficult when placing a pacemaker or central venous catheter. As such, recognizing a PLSVC that is typically incidentally discovered can prevent complications such as vascular injury. Differentiating vessels found in a similar location as PLSVC is necessary when performing thoracic vascular procedures. This pictorial essay explains the multi-detector CT findings of a PLSVC, and provides a summary of other blood vessels that require differentiation during thoracic vascular procedures.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.179-185
• /
• 2002

Purpose : For the purpose of quality assurance of self-developed stereotactic radiosurgery system, a multi-purpose phantom was fabricated, and accuracy of radiation dose distribution during radiosurgery was measured using this phantom. Materials and Methods : A farmer chamber, a 0.125 cc ion chamber and a diode detector were used for the dosimetry. Six MV x-ray from a linear accelerator (CL2100C, Varian) with stereotactic radiosurgery technique (Green Knife) was used, and multi-purpose phantom was attached to a stereotactic frame (Fisher type). Dosimetry was done by combinations of locations of the detectors in the phantom, fixed or arc beams, gantry angles $(20^{\circ}\~100^{\circ})$, and size of the circular tertiary collimators (inner diameters of $10\~40\;mm$). Results : The measurement error was less than $0.5\%$ by Farmer chamber, $0.5\%$ for 0.125 cc ion chamber, and less than $2\%$ for diode detector for the fixed beam, single arc beam, and 5-arc beam setup. Conclusion : We confirmed the accuracy of dose distribution with the radiosurgery system developed in our institute and the data from this study would be able to be effectively used for the improvement of quality assurance of stereotactic radiosurgery or fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy system.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.68 no.2
• /
• pp.80-86
• /
• 2010

Background: Recently, many institutions have acquired multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT) systems. This made it easier and more convenient to use MDCT as a initial diagnostic modality for hemoptysis. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of MDCT before bronchoscopy and/or bronchial arterial embolization (BAE) for hemoptysis. Methods: We studied a total of 125 patients with hemoptysis who underwent, between 2006 and 2008, MDCT in a routine protocol before bronchoscopy and/or BAE. One hundred two patients underwent bronchoscopy and 29 patients underwent BAE. We compared the usefulness of MDCT and bronchoscopy for detecting the bleeding site and identifying the cause. We also evaluated our ability, using MDCT, to detect instances where the bronchial artery caused hemoptysis. Results: The rate of detection of a bleeding site was 75.5% on MDCT and 50.9% on bronchoscopy. MDCT and bronchoscopy detected the bleeding site in agreement in 62.7% of patients. MDCT alone found the bleeding site in 27.5% of cases. MDCT identified the cause of hemoptysis in 77.5% and bronchoscopy in 11.8%. In 29 patients who underwent BAE, we detected a total of 37 hypertrophied bronchial arteries that were causing hemoptysis. Of 37 bronchial arteries, 23 (62.2%) were depicted on MDCT. Conclusion: MDCT is superior to bronchoscopy for detecting the bleeding site and identifying the cause of hemoptysis. MDCT can also predict the side of affected bronchial artery with depiction of hypertrophied bronchial artery and localizing the bleeding site. Doing MDCT before bronchoscopy and BAE can provide a guideline for the next step.

• Journal of Conservation Science
• /
• v.37 no.5
• /
• pp.451-463
• /
• 2021

In this study we conducted component analyses of portable XRF detectors using four Au-Cu alloy standard samples to improve their accuracy by drawing up a calibration curve based on ICP-OES standard values. The portable XRF analysis found absolute errors of 0.3 to 3.7 wt% for Au and 0.2 to 8.2 wt% for Cu, confirming that the error range and standard deviation differed from one detector to another. Furthermore, the calibration curve improved their accuracy, such that the relative error rates of Au and Cu decreased from 9.8% and 14% to 3.5% and 3.7%, respectively. Accordingly, an experiment to confirm the calibration curve was conducted using unknown samples, finding that the measured values of the unknown samples fell on the calibration curve. Therefore, to accurately analyze the components of metal cultural heritage items, it is necessary to prepare a calibration curve for each element after checking whether the detector is suitable for the artifact.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.14 no.7
• /
• pp.899-906
• /
• 2020

The WSS lateral examination is important for diagnosing spinal disorders. Recently, long-length detectors for large-area diagnose have been popularized to effectively reduce the exposure dose and examination time. It can be applied very efficiently to examinations of patients with high risk of falls, children, and adolescents. However, since the image is acquired through a single irradiation, the volume of cervical vertebra is relatively smaller than the lumbar due to the geometrical anatomy of the spine. Therefore, this study intends to fabricate an additional filter using 3D printing technology and copper filament to obtain uniform image quality in the WSS lateral examination and to analyze the results. 3D printing technology is able to easily print a desired shape, so it is widely used in the entire industrial field, and recently, a copper filament has been developed to confirm the possibility as an additional filter. In the WSS lateral examination, CNR and SNR were excellently measured when the additional filter was applied, confirming the possibility of using the additional filter.

• Progress in Medical Physics
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.154-161
• /
• 2012

Digital Radiography (DR) has rapidly developed in megavoltage X-ray imaging (MVI). Thus, a very simple and general quality assurance (QA) method is required. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the modulation transfer function (MTF), the noise power spectrum (NPS) and the detective quantum efficiency (DQE) for MVI using general QA method and computed radiography (CR) device. We used tungsten edge block with $19{\times}10{\times}1cm^3$ thickness and 6MV energy. For detector, CR-IP (image plate), CR-IP-lead, the CR-IP-back (lanex TM fast back screen), CR-IP-front (lanex TM fast front screen) were used and pre-sampling MTF was calculated. The MTF of CR-IP-front showed the highest value with 1.10 lp/mm although the CR-IP showed the only 0.70 lp/mm. The best NPS was observed in CR-IP front screen. According to the increase in spatial frequency, our results showed that DQE was approximately 1.0 cycles/mm. The present study demonstrates that the QA method with our home-made edge block can be used to evaluate MTF, NPS and DQE for MVI.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.11 no.7
• /
• pp.671-677
• /
• 2017

In this study, scattering factors affecting the quality of medical images were quantitatively analyzed and investigated. MCNPX simulation was conducted by using ANSI phantom, made of tissue equivalent materials, to calculate the scattering ratio occurred by the increase of the object thickness. Then, the result of the simulation was compared with the result of actual radiation measurement. In addition, we evaluated the image quality by the RMS evaluation, RSD and NPS analysis using X-ray images acquired with increasing object thickness. Furthermore, the scattering ratio was analyzed by increasing the thickness of acrylic phantom on chest phantom. The result showed that the scattering ratio was increased to 57.2%, 62.4%, and 66.8% from 48.9%, respectively, when the acrylic phantom thickness was increased by 1 inch from 6.1 inches. The results of MCNPX simulation and the actual measured scattering dose showed similar results. Also, as a result of RMS measurement from acquired x-ray images, the standard deviation decreased as the object thickness increased. However, in the RSD analysis considering the average incident dose, the results were increased from 0.028 to 0.039, 0.051, 0.062 as the acrylic phantom thickness was increased from 6.1 inches to 7.1 inch, 8.1 inch, and 9.1 inch, respectively. It can be seen that the increase of the scattering effect due to the increase of the object thickness reduces the SNR. Also, the NPS results obtained by measuring scattered radiation incident on the detector resulted in the increase of the noise as the object thickness increased.

• Progress in Medical Physics
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.252-260
• /
• 2012

The reduction of radiation dose from x-ray is a main concern in computed tomography (CT) imaging due to the side-effect of the dose on human body. Recently, the various methods for dose reduction have been studied in CT and one of the method is a iterative reconstruction based on total variation (TV) minimization at few-views data. In this paper, we evaluated the image quality between total variation (TV) minimization algorithm and Feldkam-Davis-kress (FDK) algorithm in micro computed tomography (CT). To evaluate the effect of TV minimization algorithm, we produced a cylindrical phantom including contrast media, water, air inserts. We can acquire maximum 400 projection views per rotation of the x-ray tube and detector. 20, 50, 90, 180 projection data were chosen for evaluating the level of image restoration by TV minimization. The phantom and mouse image reconstructed with FDK algorithm at 400 projection data used as a reference image for comparing with TV minimization and FDK algorithm at few-views. Contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), Universal quality index (UQI) were used as a image evaluation metric. When projection data are not insufficient, our results show that the image quality of reconstructed with TV minimization is similar to reconstructed image with FDK at 400 view. In the cylindrical phantom study, the CNR of TV image was 5.86, FDK image was 5.65 and FDK-reference was 5.98 at 90-views. The CNR of TV image 0.21 higher than FDK image CNR at 90-views. UQI of TV image was 0.99 and FDK image was 0.81 at 90-views. where, the number of projection is 90, the UQI of TV image 0.18 higher than FDK image at 90-views. In the mouse study UQI of TV image was 0.91, FDK was 0.83 at 90-views. the UQI of TV image 0.08 higher than FDK image at 90-views. In cylindrical phantom image and mouse image study, TV minimization algorithm shows the best performance in artifact reduction and preserving edges at few view data. Therefore, TV minimization can potentially be expected to reduce patient dose in clinics.

• Progress in Medical Physics
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.163-171
• /
• 2011

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of various technical parameters for the dose optimization in pediatric chest radiological examinations by evaluating effective dose and effective detective quantum efficiency (eDQE) including the scatter radiation from the object, the blur caused by the focal spot, geometric magnification and detector characteristics. For the tube voltages ranging from 40 to 90 kVp in 10 kVp increments at the FDD of 100, 110, 120, 150, 180 cm, the eDQE was evaluated at the same effective dose. The results showed that the eDQE was largest at 60 kVp when compares the eDQE at different tube voltage. Especially, the eDQE was considerably higher without the use of an anti-scatter grid on equivalent effective dose. This indicates that the reducing the scatter radiation did not compensate for the loss of absorbed effective photons in the grid. When the grid is not used the eDQE increased with increasing FDD because of the greater effective modulation transfer function (eMTF). However, most of major hospitals in Korea employed a short FDD of 100 cm with an anti-scatter grid for the chest radiological examination of a 15 month old infant. As a result, the entrance surface air kerma (ESAK) values for the hospitals of this survey exceeded the Korean DRL (diagnostic reference level) of $100{\mu}Gy$. Therefore, appropriate technical parameters should be established to perform pediatric chest examinations on children of different ages. The results of this study may serve as a baseline to establish detailed reference level of pediatric dose for different ages.