• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.72-78
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• 2014

The aim of the study is to test a hypothesis that quasi-breath-hold (QBH) biofeedback improves the residual respiratory motion management in gated 3D thoracic MR imaging, reducing respiratory motion artifacts with insignificant acquisition time alteration. To test the hypothesis five healthy human subjects underwent two gated MR imaging studies based on a T2 weighted SPACE MR pulse sequence using a respiratory navigator of a 3T Siemens MRI: one under free breathing and the other under QBH biofeedback breathing. The QBH biofeedback system utilized the external marker position on the abdomen obtained with an RPM system (Real-time Position Management, Varian) to audio-visually guide a human subject for 2s breath-hold at 90% exhalation position in each respiratory cycle. The improvement in the upper liver breath-hold motion reproducibility within the gating window using the QBH biofeedback system has been assessed for a group of volunteers. We assessed the residual respiratory motion management within the gating window and respiratory motion artifacts in 3D thoracic MRI both with/without QBH biofeedback. In addition, the RMSE (root mean square error) of abdominal displacement has been investigated. The QBH biofeedback reduced the residual upper liver motion within the gating window during MR acquisitions (~6 minutes) compared to that for free breathing, resulting in the reduction of respiratory motion artifacts in lung and liver of gated 3D thoracic MR images. The abdominal motion reduction in the gated window was consistent with the residual motion reduction of the diaphragm with QBH biofeedback. Consequently, average RMSE (root mean square error) of abdominal displacement obtained from the RPM has been also reduced from 2.0 mm of free breathing to 0.7 mm of QBH biofeedback breathing over the entire cycle (67% reduction, p-value=0.02) and from 1.7 mm of free breathing to 0.7 mm of QBH biofeedback breathing in the gated window (58% reduction, p-value=0.14). The average baseline drift obtained using a linear fit was reduced from 5.5 mm/min with free breathing to 0.6 mm/min (89% reduction, p-value=0.017) with QBH biofeedback. The study demonstrated that the QBH biofeedback improved the upper liver breath-hold motion reproducibility during the gated 3D thoracic MR imaging. This system can provide clinically applicable motion management of the internal anatomy for gated medical imaging as well as gated radiotherapy.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.853-860
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• 2007

In this modern era, human beings lead their life in complex environment where there are lots of parameters such as temperature, light, smell, sound, visual stimulus etc. that play important role for quality life. These parameters affect physical and mental behavior of a human being immensely. To ensure quality life the demand for quality products is always associated with human emotion and sensibility. Due to human sensibility and emotion involvement with quality life, the design stages of any kind of product must include some certain features related with emotion and sensibility. The cues for optimizing artificial environment are the physiological responses of human in that environment. The conventional approach of environmental physiology is to measure the relationship between environmental physical parameters and human psychological parameters under artificial conditions. Using that approach we tried to design an artificial environment for our daily lives and activities associated with both physiological and psychological behavior. We developed the technique to present the mock environment and software to measure and evaluate sensibility physiologically or psychologically and a simulator to measure and evaluate sensibility that can be utilized for large scale industrial production and design of environment. Simulator to measure and analyze human sensibility (SMAS) was constructed, which was utilized to estimate human sensibility and to simulate living and office environment.