• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3206-3212
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• 2023

We developed a miniaturized multi-dimensional radiation sensor system consisting of an inorganic scintillator array and plastic optical fibers. This system can be applied to remotely obtain the radioactivity distribution and identify the radionuclides in radioactive waste by utilizing a scanning method. Variation in scintillation light was measured in two-dimensional regions of interest and then converted into radioactivity distribution images. Outliers present in the images were removed by using a digital filter to make the hot spot location more accurate and cubic interpolation was applied to make the images smoother and clearer. Next, gamma-ray spectroscopy was performed to identify the radionuclides, and three-dimensional volume scanning was also performed to effectively find the hot spot using the proposed array sensor.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1966-1973
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• 2023

Virtual reality technology has been widely used in the field of nuclear and radiation safety, dose rate computing in virtual environment is essential for optimizing radiation protection and planning the work in radioactive-controlled area. Because the CPU-based gamma dose rate computing takes up a large amount of time and computing power for voxelization of volumetric radioactive source, it is inefficient and limited in its applied scope. This study is to develop an efficient gamma dose rate computing code and apply into fast virtual simulation. To improve the computing efficiency of the point kernel algorithm in the reference (Li et al., 2020), we design a GPU-based computing framework for taking full advantage of computing power of virtual engine, propose a novel voxelization algorithm of volumetric radioactive source. According to the framework, we develop the GPPK(GPU-based point kernel gamma dose rate computing) code using GPU programming, to realize the fast dose rate computing in virtual world. The test results show that the GPPK code is play and plug for different scenarios of virtual simulation, has a better performance than CPU-based gamma dose rate computing code, especially on the voxelization of three-dimensional (3D) model. The accuracy of dose rates from the proposed method is in the acceptable range.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.201-215
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• 1996

Radiation and radioactive materials serve man in many beneficial ways. Diagnostic X-ray, radiation therapy, and other nuclear medicine uses of radioactivity save thousands of lives each year. Industrial application of radiation, such as radiography, make many manufactured products more reliable and less expensive. Nuclear power plants are producing more electrical power each year and reducing our dependence on imported oil. However, radiation can and dose produce harmful effects particularly as the reault of a radiation accident in which a victim receives as the result of a radiation accident in which a victim receives a large dose. Fortunately such accidents are very rare and recently we need more electric power produced by nuclear power plants. Considering increase of use of radiation or radioactive materials, we have to establish the radiological emergency response system prepared for radiation accidents.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2004.02a
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• pp.257-259
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• 2004

In this paper measurement method of uranium isotope ratio of uranium-bearing particles in swipe samples was introduced; Swipe sample screening program was proposed on the basis of studying various destructive assay and non-destructive assays. Scanning electron microscope(SEM) equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence(XRF) system was applied to locate the deposited uranium-containing particles on the graphite support, particle's composition and size can be identified. Some isotope ratio results were compared with those of other bulk analytical methods; By measuring the same prepared sample, we got the U-particle isotopic ratio data similar to those from IAEA NWAL, indicating that our operation parameters and experimental conditions are viable and can be used for measurement of U-particle isotopic ratio from swipe samples.

• Journal of Plant Biology
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• v.8 no.1_2
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• pp.1-4
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• 1965

Beta-ray irradiation effects on structural changes of the chromosomes in root tip of rye, Secale cereale L., seedlings, particularly the frequency of chromosome bridge induction at anaphase stage treated with radioactive sulfur (S35) solutions were studied in this experiment. Among the four different concentrations of isotope solution, the lowest one, 0.4$\mu$c solution, has shown weak effect on the induction of chromosome aberration. On the other hand, higher concentration, 25.6$\mu$c solution, induced higher frequency of chromosome bridge induction as much as 4.3%. Concerning the relationship between the ages of after treatment and the ranges of concentration, the higher concentrations showed more pronounced effects than the lower ones.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.1747-1753
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• 2022

Compton imaging is the main method for locating radioactive hot spots emitting high-energy gamma-ray photons. In particular, this imaging method is crucial when the photon energy is too high for coded-mask aperture imaging methods to be effective or when a large field of view is required. Reconstruction of the photon source requires advanced Compton event processing algorithms to determine the exact position of the source. In this study, we introduce a novel method based on a Deep Learning algorithm with a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to perform Compton imaging. This algorithm is trained on simulated data and tested on real data acquired with Caliste, a single planar CdTe pixelated detector. We show that performance in terms of source location accuracy is equivalent to state-of-the-art algorithms, while computation time is significantly reduced and sensitivity is improved by a factor of ~5 in the Caliste configuration.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.317-323
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• 2014

Odyssey, one of the NASA's Mars exploration program and SELENE (Kaguya), a Japanese lunar orbiting spacecraft have a payload of Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (GRS) for analyzing radioactive chemical elements of the atmosphere and the surface. In these days, gamma-ray spectroscopy with a High-Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector has been widely used for the activity measurements of natural radionuclides contained in the soil of the Earth. The energy spectra obtained by the HPGe detectors have been generally analyzed by means of the Window Analysis (WA) method. In this method, activity concentrations are determined by using the net counts of energy window around individual peaks. Meanwhile, an alternative method, the so-called Full Spectrum Analysis (FSA) method uses count numbers not only from full-absorption peaks but from the contributions of Compton scattering due to gamma-rays. Consequently, while it takes a substantial time to obtain a statistically significant result in the WA method, the FSA method requires a much shorter time to reach the same level of the statistical significance. This study shows the validation results of FSA method. We have compared the concentration of radioactivity of $^{40}K$, $^{232}Th$ and $^{238}U$ in the soil measured by the WA method and the FSA method, respectively. The gamma-ray spectrum of reference materials (RGU and RGTh, KCl) and soil samples were measured by the 120% HPGe detector with cosmic muon veto detector. According to the comparison result of activity concentrations between the FSA and the WA, we could conclude that FSA method is validated against the WA method. This study implies that the FSA method can be used in a harsh measurement environment, such as the gamma-ray measurement in the Moon, in which the level of statistical significance is usually required in a much shorter data acquisition time than the WA method.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.193-200
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• 2014

In this paper, the prototype of one-channel gamma-ray spectroscope for automatic radiopharmaceutical systhesis system was designed and characterized. The prototype employed CZT (CdZnTe) spear detector for gamma-ray detection and employed analog-type signal processing method. A radioactive sample Co-60 was used for measuring performance of the gamma-ray spectroscope and energy spectrum is gained with bandwidth of 1173keV. The analog board is made up of SF (shaping filter) and PHA (peak and hold amplifier) for shaping CZT output signal appropriately and ADC (analog to digital converter) and FPGA (field programmable gate array) for drawing gamma-ray spectrum by counting the digitalized gamma-ray signal data.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.33-41
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• 2007

Bone scan using radioactive isotope can be more effective than conventional X-ray radiograph for finding jaw lesion because it takes an image of the physiologic change of bone. This study is designed to show how available bone scan is able to diagnose jaw lesion better than simple X-ray and CT, as well as to determine a basis of diagnosis for jaw lesion using bone scan. The 77 patients, visiting the Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, Department of Dankook University Hospital from January 2002. to August 2005. who were diagnosed histopathologically with postoperative malignant tumor, osteomyelitis, and bone infiltrative benign disease. Preoperative X-ray, CT, bone scan were taken and were compared with histopathologic finding. Also to compare specificty of each lesion in bone scan, bone density was measured to compare. The results were as follows. 1. Among the 25 cases of oral malignant tumor of bony invasion, a positive diagnosis associated with histopathologic evaluation, 22 cases(88%) in bone scan, 14 cases(56%) in CT image, and 10 cases40%) in simple X-ray. 2. Among the 31 cases of osteomyelitis, a positive diagnosis associated with histopathologic evaluation, 30 cases(97%) in bone scan, 23 cases(74%) in CT image, and 19 cases(61%) in simple X-ray. 3. Among the 11cases of bone infiltrative benign disease, a positive diagnosis associated with histopathologic evaluation, 11 cases(100%) in bone scan, 10 cases(91%) in CT image, and 6 cases(55%) in simple X-ray. 4. Measurement of bone density in each group showed no statistical significant difference between malignant tumor and osteomyelitis as well as benign bone disease. But, a statistical significance was seen between osteomyelitis and benign bone disease. From this results, bone scan are more sensitive than simple X-ray and CT image in jaw lesion diagnosis, but specificity shows no significant difference. Therefore, it should be suggested that evaluation of bone scan must be carrying out in reference to final histopathologic diagnosis.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.16-21
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• 2022

Background: Epidemiological observations such as mental retardation, physical deformities, etc., in children besides different types of cancer in the adult population of the Malwa region have been reported. The present study is designed to get insight into the role of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) in causing detrimental health effects observed in the general population of this region. Materials and Methods: Deep soil samples were collected from different locations in the Malwa region. Their activity concentrations were determined using low-level background gammaray spectrometry. High efficiency and high purity germanium detector capped in a lead-shielded chamber having a resolution of 1.8 keV at 1,173 keV and 2.0 keV at the 1,332 keV line of ⁶⁰Co was used in the present work. Data were evaluated with Genie-2000 software. Results and Discussion: Mean activity concentrations of ²³⁸U, ²³²Th, and ⁴⁰K in deep soil were found to be 101.3 Bq/kg, 65.8 Bq/kg, and 688.6 Bq/kg, respectively. The mean activity concentration of ²³⁸U was found to be three and half times higher than the global average prescribed by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). It was further observed that the activity concentration of ²³²Th and ⁴⁰K has a magnitude that is nearly one and half times higher than the global average prescribed by UNSCEAR. In addition, the radioisotope ¹³⁷Cs which is likely to have its origin in radiation fallout was also observed. It is postulated that the NORM present in high quantity in deep soil somehow get mobilized into the water aquifers used by the general population and thereby causing harmful health problems. Conclusion: It can be stated that the present work has been able to demonstrate the use of low background gamma-ray spectrometry to understand the role of NORM in causing health-related effects in a general population of the Malwa region of Punjab, India.