• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.122-127
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• 2010

Purpose: The Xpress3.$cardiac^{TM}$ which is a kind of wide beam reconstruction (WBR) method developed by UltraSPECT (Haifa, Israel) enables the acquisition of at quarter time while maintaining image quality. The purpose of this study is to investigate the usefulness of WBR method for decreasing scan times and to compare to it with filtered back projection (FBP), which is the method routinely used. Materials and Methods: Phantom and clinical studies were performed. The anthropomorphic torso phantom was made on an equality with counts from patient's body. The Tl-201 concentrations in the compartments were 74 kBq (2 ${\mu}Ci$)/cc in myocardium, 11.1 kBq (0.3 ${\mu}Ci$)/cc in soft tissue, and 2.59 kBq (0.07 ${\mu}Ci$)/cc in lung. The non-gated Tl-201 myocardial perfusion SPECT data were acquired with the phantom. The former study was scanned for 50 seconds per frame with FBP method, and the latter study was acquired for 13 seconds per frame with WBR method. Using the Xeleris ver. 2.0551, full width at half maximum (FWHM) and average image contrast were compared. In clinical studies, we analyzed the 30 patients who were examined by Tl-201 gated myocardial perfusion SPECT in department of nuclear medicine at Asan Medical Center from January to April 2010. The patients were imaged at full time (50 second per frame) with FBP algorithm and again quarter-time (13 second per frame) with the WBR algorithm. Using the 4D MSPECT (4DM), Quantitative Perfusion SPECT (QPS), and Quantitative Gated SPECT (QGS) software, the summed stress score (SSS), summed rest score (SRS), summed difference score, end-diastolic volume (EDV), end-systolic volume (ESV) and ejection fraction (EF) were analyzed for their correlations and statistical comparison by paired t-test. Results: As a result of the phantom study, the WBR method improved FWHM more than about 30% compared with FBP method (WBR data 5.47 mm, FBP data 7.07 mm). And the WBR method's average image contrast was also higher than FBP method's. However, in result of quantitative indices, SSS, SDS, SRS, EDV, ESV, EF, there were statistically significant differences from WBR and FBP(p<0.01). In the correlation of SSS, SDS, SRS, there were significant differences for WBR and FBP (0.18, 0.34, 0.08). But EDV, ESV, EF showed good correlation with WBR and FBP (0.88, 0.89, 0.71). Conclusion: From phantom study results, we confirmed that the WBR method reduces an acquisition time while improving an image quality compared with FBP method. However, we should consider significant differences in quantitative indices. And it needs to take an evaluation test to apply clinical study to find a cause of differences out between phantom and clinical results.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.11-18
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• 1996

A greenhouse experiment on the Sr-90 uptake by peanut and sesame was conducted through pot cultures on a sandy loam soil of pH 6.35 treated with Sr-90 in 5.2 and 31.2Bq per gram. The rate of Sr-90 transfer from soil to each plant part, the ratio of Sr-90 concentration in the part to the concentration in soil, and the patterns of their temporal changes were not, on the whole, significantly different between the two treatments. About 0.7 and 0.5 % of Sr-90 in soil transferred to all the mature plants of peanut and sesame, respectively, with the radioactivities in their roots not counted. Only 4% and less than 15% of Sr-90 absorbed by peanut and sesame, respectively, translocated to their seeds. Both crops showed the highest Sr-90 concentration in the leaf and the lowest in the seed. At maturities, the concentration ratio in dry seed was 0.4 in peanut and 3.3 in sesame and that in dry leaf was 12.5 and 10.7, respectively. Sr-90 concentrations in the top 15 cm soil after harvests averaged about 80 % of the concentrations at starting. Sr-90 uptake resulted in neither growth inhibition nor yield decrease.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.518-527
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• 2014

Objectives: The adverse health effects attributed to exposure to radon have been well known over the world. However, the efforts for prevention and mitigation of radon have not been taken in Korea so far. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation methods applied for various types of houses and public buildings with high level of radon. Methods: Based on the results of "National Radon Survey" performed by the National Institute of Environmental Research(NIER) in 2010-2012, we selected 30 candidate buildings consisting of 20 houses and 10 public buildings with greater than $148Bq/m^3$ of radon level. We measured the concentration of radon in 30 buildings, using E-PERMs and RAD-7 during January to March of 2013. More than five E-PERMs and one RAD-7 per house were installed for seven days. Ten houses and five public buildings were finally chosen to be mitigated after mainly considering the level of radon and the location of buildings nationwide. Three mitigation methods such as Sealing, two types of Active Ventilation(window-shaped and wall-typed ventilations), and Active Soil Depressurization(ASD) were applied, and the concentrations of radon were measured before and after mitigation, respectively. To evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation methods, reduction rates of radon were calculated and Wilcoxon's signed-rank test was performed. Results: The mean concentration of 15 buildings just before radon mitigation was $297.8Bq/m^3$, and most of the buildings were located in Gangwon, Chungbuk, Chungnam, and Daegu areas(73.3%), and built in 1959-1998. The level of radon decreased from 48% to 90% and kept the below recommendation limit of $148Bq/m^3$ after installation of radon mitigation. Among mitigation methods applied, the reduction rate(58.7-90.4%) of radon attributed to ASD was the greatest than that of other methods, followed by Active Ventilation(48.4-78.4%) and Sealing(<22%). The effectiveness of radon reduction by window-shaped Active Ventilation(63.2-75.2%) was relatively better than that of wall-typed Active Ventilation(48.4-54.3%). Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that ASD could be more effective for radon mitigation. Moreover, our findings would be background information in future for making the strategy for radon mitigation nationwide, as well as for developing Korean-version of mitigation techniques according to types of dwellings in Korea.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.321-330
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• 2018

Concentrations of the atmospheric radon and gaseous pollutants were measured at the Gosan site on Jeju Island from 2010 to 2015, in order to observe their time-series variation characteristics and examine the concentration change related to the airflow transport pathways. Based on the realtime monitoring of the atmospheric radon and gaseous pollutants, the daily mean concentrations of radon ($^{222}Rn$) and gaseous pollutants($SO_2$, CO, $O_3$, $NO_x$) were $2,400mBq\;m^{-3}$ and 1.3, 377.6, 41.1, 3.9 ppb, respectively. On monthly variations of radon, the mean concentration in October was the highest as $3,033mBq\;m^{-3}$, almost twice as that in July ($1,452mBq\;m^{-3}$). The diurnal variation of radon concentration shows bimodal curves at early morning (around 7 a.m.) and near midnight, whereas its lowest concentration was recorded at around 3 p.m. Several gaseous pollutants($SO_2$, CO, $NO_x$) showed a similar seasonal variation with radon concentration as high in winter and low in summer, whereas the $O_3$ concentrations had a bit different seasonal trend. According to the cluster back trajectory analysis, the frequencies of airflow pathways moving from continental North China, East China, Japan and the East Sea, the Korean Peninsula, and North Pacific Ocean routes were 36, 37, 10, 13, and 4%, respectively. When the airflow were moved to Jeju Island from continental China, the concentrations of radon and gaseous pollutants were relatively high. On the other hand, when the airflows were moved from North Pacific Ocean and East Sea, their concentrations were much lower than those from continental China.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.97-102
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• 1998

The cumulative deposition of $^{137}Cs$ in the soil of Korea has been studied. Using ${\gamma$-ray spertrometry, the conrentrations of $^{137}Cs$ were determined for the soil samples collected to a depth of 20 cm. The average accumulated depositions of $^{137}Cs$ were estimated roughly to be 2,501 ${\pm}$ $m^{-2}$ in the forest and 1,058 ${\pm}$ 322 Bq $m^{-2}$ in the hill. The inventory value of $^{137}Cs$ in the forest is about two times higher than that in the hill. Except for some cases, the concentrations of $^{137}Cs$ in the undisturbed soils decreased exponentially with increasing the soil depth. The influences of rainfall, organic matter content, clay content and pH on the deposition of $^{137}Cs$ were studied using the field method. Among these factors, the organic matter content played the most important role in the retention and relative mobility of $^{137}Cs$ in the soil. The other factors such as rainfall, clay content and pH showed weak correlation with the deposition of $^{137}Cs$ in the soil.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.99-105
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• 2012

Purpose : This study is designed to compare two parameters reflecting $^{18}F$-FDG uptake, SUV and radioactivity, for diagnosis of thyroid cancer in dual time $^{18}F$-FDG PET/CT imaging and to find which parameter is more useful to decide whether the tumor is malignant or not. Materials and Methods : We performed retrospective study for 40 patients. All patients are diagnosed as primary thyroid cancer and examined $^{18}F$-FDG PET/CT. First, we got the dispersion of scattering beam of neck and lung apex to set a background and compared each dispersion, mean value, standard deviation of maxSUV and radioactivity. Also, mean maxSUV, ${\Delta}maxSUV$, ${\Delta}maxBq$/ml(%) and radioactivity between groups according to lesion's size based on biopsy are compared with independent-sample t-test. Results : the values that were from maxSUV and radioactivity measurement technique were compensated and calculated to practical values for mean comparison and patients were divided to two groups based on tumor size, Group1 ($size{\leq}1$ cm, n=21), Group2 (size>1 cm, n=19) for accurate comparison. In Group1, maxSUV (semi-quantitative analysis) was increased from $5.64{\pm}5.85$ (1.89~17.84) at first image to $5.90{\pm}5.01$ (1.95~18.22) at second image and radioactivity (Bq/ml) (quantitative analysis) showed similar increase from $5.93{\pm}6.38$ (2.50~16.75) at first image to $6.01{\pm}5.25$ (2.66~16.58) at second image. In Group2, TFmaxSUV was $10.54{\pm}14.36$ (2.54~33.89) in true first image, TSmaxSUV was $9.85{\pm}12.88$ (2.62~26.20) in true second image separately. The maxSUV showed a significant difference in the mean comparison between the two groups (p=0.035) But, mean radioactivity (Bq/ml) was $5.93{\pm}6.38$ (4.81~40.99) in true first image, $6.01{\pm}5.25$ (4.51~36.93) in true second image and didn't show a significant difference statistically (p=0.126) Conclusion : In diagnosis of thyroid tumor, SUV and radioactivity depending on $^{18}F$-FDG uptake showed high similarity with coefficient of determination (R2=0.939) and malignant evaluation results using dual time also showed similar aspect. Radioactivity for evaluation of malignant tumor didn't show better specificity or sensitivity than maxSUV.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.142-146
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• 2020

Background: Tritium (³H) analysis in groundwater was difficult because of its low activity. Therefore, the electrolytic enrichment method was used. To improve the detection limit and for performing simple analysis, a high-volume counting vial with the available liquid scintillation counter (LSC) was investigated. Further, it was compared with a conventional 20-mL counting vial. Materials and Methods: The LSC with the electrolytic enrichment method was used ³H analysis in groundwater. A high-volume 145-mL counting vial was compared with a conventional 20-mL counting vial to determine the counting characteristics of different LSCs. Results and Discussion: When a Quantulus LSC was used, the counting window between channels 35 and 250 was used. The background count was approximately 1.86 cpm, and the counting efficiency increased from 8% to 40% depending on the mixing ratio of the volume of sample and cocktail solution. For LSC-LB7, the optimum counting window was between 1 and 4.9 keV, which was selected by the factory (Hitachi Aloka Medical Ltd., Japan) by considering quenching using a standard external gamma source. The background count of LSC-LB7 was approximately 3.60 ± 0.29 cpm when the 145-mL vial was used and 2.22 ± 0.17 cpm when the 20-mL vial was used. The minimum detectable activity (MDA) of the 20-mL vial was greater for LSC-LB7 than for Quantulus. The MDA with the 145-mL vial was improved to 0.3 Bq/L when compared with the value of 1.6 Bq/L for the 20-mL vial. Conclusion: The counting efficiency when using the 145-mL vial was 27%, whereas it was 18% when using the 20-mL vial. This difference can be attributed to the vial volume. The figure of merit (FOM) of the 145-mL vial was four times greater than that of the 20-mL vial because the volume of the former vial is approximately seven times greater than that of the latter. Further, the MDA for ³H decreased from 1.6 to 0.3 Bq/L. The counting efficiency and FOM of LSC-LB7 was slightly less than those of Quantulus when the 20-mL vial was used. The background counting rate of the Quantulus was lower than that of the LSC-LB7.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.123-131
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• 2018

This study compared PENELOPE with measured values from low energy peak to high energy peak to reduce peak to compton ratio and continuum background spectrum using $^{60}Co$, $^{137}Cs$ and mixed volume source. In addition, the change in backscattering and compton edge efficiency was compared with that of PENELOPE through changes in the vicinity of low energy. The results from the mixed volume source are applied to the soil samples to determine how much the minimum detection limits of the soil samples are reduced in the suppression and unsuppressed mode. The compton suppression of the low energy region of $^{60}CO$ (1,173 keV) was considerable, and the Compton edge RF for the $^{137}Cs$ (661 keV) peak was 2.8. In particular, the $^{60}Co$ source emits coincidence gamma rays of 1,173.2 keV and 1,332.5 keV, so compton inhibition was reduced by approximately 21%. RF of compton edges of 1,173 keV and 1,332 keV emitted from a $^{60}Co$ source was 3.2 and 3.4, and the peak to compton edge ratio was improved to 8: 1. And Compared with Penelope, the uncertainty was well within 2%. In compton unsuppressed mode, MDA values of 661 keV, 1,173 keV and 1,332 keV were 0.535, 0.173 and 0.136 Bq/kg, respectively, but decreased in compton suppressed mode to 0.121, 0.00826 and 0.00728 Bq/kg. Thus, Compton suppressed could reduce the background radioactivity and the radioactivity contained in the detector itself.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.60-67
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• 2004

The exposure dose form recycling of a large amount of the steel scrap from the KRR-1＆2 decommissioning activities was evaluated, and also the clearance level(draft) was derived. The maximum individual dose and collective dose were evaluated by modifying internal dose conversion factor which was based on the concept of effective dose in ICRP 60, applied to the RESRAD-RECYCLE ver 3.06 computing code, IAEA Safety Series 111-P-1.1 and NUREG-1640 as the assessment tool. The result of assessment for individual dose and collective dose is 23.9 $\mu$Sv per year and 0.11 man$.$Sv per year respectively. The clearance levels were ultimately determined by extracting the most conservative value form the results of the generic assessment and specific assessment methodologies. The result of clearance level for radionuclides( $Co^{60}$ , C $s^{l37}$) is less than 1.14${\times}$10$^{-1}$ Bq/g to comply with the clearance criterion(maximum individual dose : 10 $\mu$Sv per year, collective dose : 1 man$.$Sv per year) provided for Korea Atomic Energy Act and relevant regulations.s.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.660-664
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• 2003

The exposure dose form recycling on a large amount of the steel scrap from the KRR-1&2 decommissioning activities was evaluated, and also the clearance level was derived. The maximum individual dose and collective dose were evaluated by modifying internal dose conversion factor which was based on the concept of effective dose in ICRP 60, applied to the RESRAD-RECYCLE ver 3.06 computing code, IAEA Safety Series III-P-1.1 and NUREG-1640 as the assessment tool. The result of assessment for individual dose and collective dose is 23.9 ${\mu}Sv$ per year and 0.11 man$\cdot$Sv per year respectively. The clearance levels were ultimately determined by extracting the most conservative value form the results of the generic assessment and specific assessment methodologies. The result of clearance level for radionuclides($Co^60$, $Cs^137$) is less than $1.67{\times}10^{-1}$ Bq/g to comply with the clearance criterion(maximum individual dose : 10 $\muSv$ per year, collective dose : 1 man$\cdot$Sv per year) provided for Korea Atomic Energy Act and relevant regulations.