[en] During last a decade, there has been increased demand for 3D-printed medical devices with significant improvement of 3D-Printer (also known as Additive. Manufacturing·AM), which depend upon human body features. Especially, demand for personalized medical material is highly growing with being super-aged society. In this study, 3D-reconstructed 3D mesh image from CT/MRI–images is demonstrated to analyse each patients' personalized anatomical features by using in house, then to be able to manufacture its counterpart. Developed software is distributed free of charge, letting various researcher identify biological feature for each areas

[en] Magnetic resonance imaging is a technique specialized in soft tissue imaging with high contrast resolution without in vivo ionization and has been widely used in various clinical settings. In particular, the recent increase in social stress factors has been used in the diagnosis of pituitary adenoma, the incidence increases rapidly. Recently, due to the development of magnetic resonance imaging, it is possible to diagnose micro pituitary adenoma, but despite the use of contrast medium, there has been a difficulty in diagnosing the pituitary adenoma due to its small size and noise. In order to solve this problem, a proposed method of separating signal components image and noise components image from a measured image is applied, and the improvement of diagnostic efficiency is attempted by removing noise. As a result, it was confirmed that the image quality was improved as a whole by applying SNR for 30 subjects data. It is expected that this study will be useful as a pre-processing method for improving the image quality and developing diagnostic indicators of pituitary adenoma

[en] Positron emission tomography (PET) is widely used imaging modality for effective and accurate functional testing and medical diagnosis using radioactive isotopes. However, PET has difficulties in acquiring images with high image quality due to constraints such as the amount of radioactive isotopes injected into the patient, the detection time, the characteristics of the detector, and the patient’s motion. In order to overcome this problem, we have succeeded to improve the image quality by using the dynamic image reconstruction method based on singular value decomposition. However, there is still some question about the characteristics of the proposed technique. In this study, the characteristics of reconstruction method based on singular value decomposition was estimated over computational simulation. As a result, we confirmed that the singular value decomposition based reconstruction technique distinguishes the images well when the signal - to - noise ratio of the input image is more than 20 decibels and the feature vector angle is more than 60 degrees. In addition, the proposed methode to estimate the characteristics of reconstruction technique can be applied to other spatio-temporal feature based dynamic image reconstruction techniques. The deduced conclusion of this study can be useful guideline to apply medical image into SVD based dynamic image reconstruction technique to improve the accuracy of medical diagnosis

[en] Acute stroke is a one of common disease that require fast diagnosis and treatment to save patients life. however, the acute stroke may cause lifelong disability due to brain damage with no prompt surgical procedure. In order to diagnose the Stroke, brain perfusion CT examination and possible rapid implementation of 3D angiography has been widely used. However, a low-dose technique should be applied for the examination since a lot of radiation exposure to the patient may cause secondary damage for the patients. Therefore, the degradation of the measured CT images may interferes with a clinical check in that blood vessel shapes o n the CT image are significantly affected by gaussian noise. In this study, we employed the spatio-temporal technique to analyze dynamic (brain perfusion) CT data to improve an image quality for successful clinical diagnosis. As a results, proposed technique could remove gaussian noise successfully, demonstrated a possibility of new image segmentation technique for CT angiography. Qualitative evaluation was conducted by skilled radiological technologists, indicated significant quality improvement of dynamic CT images. the proposed technique will be useful tools as a clinical application for brain perfusion CT examination

[en] The purpose of this study was to compare and analyze the patient dose according to the distance between the X-ray tube focus and the image receptor, and to propose a new method for quantitatively evaluating the image quality. Using this quantitative evaluation method, the optimal distance for increasing x-ray image quality with low radiation dose was estimated between source and image receptor in Rib series radiography. Phantom images were obtained by changing the distance between focus and image receptor (100 cm and 180 cm). The patient radiation dose was estimated using entrance surface dose and dose area product. In order to evaluate image quality objectively, a non - reference image evaluation method was employed with paper and salt noise and Gaussian filter. As a result of this study, when the SID was changed from 100 cm to 180 cm, the entrance surface dose decreased by 4 ⁓ 5 times and the dose area product decreased by 3 times. In addition, there is no significant difference in image quality between of SID 180 cm and SID 100 cm. In conclusion, it was demonstrated that performing the rib series radiography at SID 180 cm is an optimal method to reduce the exposure dose and improve the image quality

[en] Positron Emission Tomography(PET) is nuclear medical tests which is a combination of several compounds with a radioactive isotope that can be injected into body to quantitatively measure the metabolic rate (in the body). Especially, Phenomena that increase (sing) glucose metabolism in cancer tissue using the 18F-FDG (Fluorodeoxyglucose) is utilized widely in cancer diagnosis. And then, Numerous studies have been reported that incidence seems high availability even in the modern diagnosis of dementia and Parkinson's (disease) in brain disease. When using a dynamic PET image including the time information in the static information that is provided for the diagnosis many can increase the accuracy of diagnosis. For this reason, clinical researchers getting great attention but, it is the lack of tools to conduct research. And, it interfered complex mathematical algorithm and programming skills for activation of research. In this study, in order to easy to use and enable research dPET, we developed the software based graphic user interface(GUI). In the future, by many clinical researcher using DIA-Tool is expected to be of great help to dPET research

[en] We wanted to evaluate the usefulness of modified intravenous analgesia for the management of pain during uterine artery embolization for leiomyomata. Between April 2004 and July 2004, 15 patients with symptomatic fibroids underwent uterine artery embolization and pain management. Except the three patients for whom the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) score was not obtained, twelve patients were included in this study. For pain management, epidural PCA (Patient Controlled Analgesia) was used in two patients, intravenous PCA was used in two patients and modified intravenous analgesia injection was used in eight patients. For all the patients, we used the 2.8 Fr coaxial microcatheter and 500-710 μ m PVA particles for the embolic materials. The protocol of the modified intravenous analgesia injection was as follow, 1) prior to femoral artery puncture, 30 mg of ketorolac tromethamine (Tarasyn)was injected via an intravenous route. 2) At the time that the one side uterine artery embolization was finished, normal saline mixed 150 mg meperidine (Demerol) was administered through the side port of the intravenous line that was used for hydration. 3) Additional ketorolac tromethamine 30 mg was injected after 6 hour. The VAS score and side effects were then checked. After 12 hours, the VAS score was rechecked. If the VAS score was above 4, this was considered as failure of pain management. The VAS scores, complications and side effects for the modified intravenous analgesia injection were compared with that of IV PCA and epidural PCA. The average VAS score of the modified intravenous analgesia injection, intravenous PCA and epidural PCA was 1.4, 1 and 0, respectively; the number of additional intramuscular injections of analgesia was 0.5, 0.5 and 0, respectively. All the patients who underwent epidural PCA had back pain at the puncture site and 1 patient who underwent modified intravenous analgesia injection experienced mild dyspnea, but they easily recovered with such conservative treatment as an oxygen supply. No serious side effects or complications developed from the modified intravenous analgesia injection. Modified intravenous analgesia injection is well tolerated for the pain management of uterine fibroid embolization and it is a relatively inexpensive, safe method as used in our radiologic practice

[en] To assess the usefulness of MRI for determining the presence of a large (> 10 cm) unilateral ovarian tumor by detecting the existence of a normal contralateral ovary, and to establish the difference in detection rates between premenopausal and postmenopausal women, and benign and malignant tumors. Forty-two patients who underwent MR imaging and in whom the intraoperative gross and pathologic findings indicated the presence of a unilateral ovarian mass and a normal contralateral ovary were included in this study. The images obtained were retrospectively analyzed by two radiologists, who determined the detection rate of the normal contralateral ovary and whether this differed between premenopausal and postmenopausal women, and benign and malignant tumors. Contralateral normal ovaries were detected in 35 (83.3%) of 42 patients [22 of 23 ovaries (95.7%) in premenopausal women and 13 of 19 (68.4%) in postmenopausal women], with a statistically significant difference (p=0.018). Twelve of 16 of these ovaries (75%) were present in women with malignant tumors, and 23 (88.5%) of 26 in those with benign tumors, but the difference was not statistically significant (p=0.256). MR imaging is useful for detecting a normal contralateral ovary and for determining the site at which a large (> 10 cm) unilateral ovarian tumor originates, especially in premenopausal women

[en] The purpose of this study is to present the algorithm to minimize the image noise caused by deterioration of high X-ray container inspection equipment and the faulty detection sensors, and to improvement quality of the container inspection images using MATLAB Toolbox. The daily checking images for the container inspection were used with the subject images and the noise caused by the horizontal and vertical images was evaluated with Root Mean Square (RMS) method, which is the most basic evaluation method of digital radiation image. Also, quality of the improved images was evaluated compared to quality of the original images. As a result, all RMS value of the improved images was lower then the original images by a mean of 13.5% in the horizontal images and 18.2% in the vertical images respectively. Also so did RMS value of the improved container images, by a mean of 13.4% in the horizontal images and 19.1% in the vertical images respectively. These findings can be verified objectively and visually and they would help the reading process of the container images be effective in Korea Customs Service

[en] Near-infrared radiation (NIR) is non-ionizing, non-invasive, and deep tissue penetration in biological material, thereby increasing research interests as a medical imaging technique in the world. However, the use of current near-infrared medical image is extremely limited in Korea (ROK) since it is not well known among radiologic technologists and radiological researchers. Therefore to strengthen the knowledge for NIR medical imaging is necessary so as to prepare a qualified radiological professionals to serve medical images in high-quality on the clinical sites. In this study, an overview of the features and principles of N IR imaging was demonstrated. The latest research topics and worldwide research trends were introduced for radiologic technologist to reinforce their technical skills. In particular, wound care and diabetic foot which have high feasibility for clinical translation were introduced in order to contribute to accelerating NIR research for developing the field of radiological science