• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.34-42
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• 2010

With the expanded use of radiation in modern medical practices, the most important issue in regards to efforts to reduce individual exposure dose is quality assurance. Therefore in order to study the present condition of quality assurance, the Gwangju Metropolitan City area was divided into five districts each containing ten hospitals. Four experiments were conducted: a reproducibility experiment for kVp, mA, and examination time (sec) intensity of illumination; half-value layer (HVL) measurement; and beam perpendicularity test matching experiment. The tube voltage reproducibility experiment for all fifty hospitals resulted in a 95.33% passing rate and mA and examination time both resulted in a 77.0% passing rate. The passing rate for intensity of illumination was 86.0% and 52.0% for HVL, which was the lowest passing rate of all four factors. For the beam perpendicularity test matching experiment, generally the central flux is matched to within $1.5^{\circ}$. Of all fifty hospitals 30.0% were beyond $3^{\circ}$. The results of the survey showed that 58% responded that they knew about quality assurance cycle. All fifty respondents stated that they have not received any training in regards to quality assurance at their current place of employment. Although quality assurance is making relative progress, the most urgent issue is awareness of the importance of quality assurance. Therefore, the implementation of professional training focusing on safety management and accurate quality assurance of radiation will reduce the exposure to radiation for radiologists and patients and higher quality imaging using less dosage will also be possible.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.322-330
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• 2008

The properties of discharge, luminance, and spectroscopy are investigated in a longitudinal and transverse discharge fluorescent lamps with tube of outer diameter 4 mm. The sample lamps are prepared to be three kinds of gas composition such as mercury lamps of Ne(95%)+Ar(5%)+Hg(2 mg), the mercury-free lamps of Xe 100% and Ne+Xe(4%). The gas pressure is in the range of $5{\sim}300\;Torr$. In the mercury lamps, the longitudinal discharge having a positive column is high in luminance and efficiency, while the transverse discharge is no luminance at all. In the Xe-lamps, the transverse discharge shows relatively good in efficiency as compared with the longitudinal discharge which has a high discharge voltage and a low luminance and efficiency. In the transverse discharge of relatively high efficiency, a pure Xe(100%) gas discharge has a higher efficiency than the mixture gas of Ne+Xe(4%). Through these experiments, the properties of mercury and xenon lamps are verified. In the mercury lamps, the longitudinal discharge of tubular fluorescent lamps is high in luminance and efficiency, while the transverse discharge of flat panel fluorescent lamps are low in luminance efficiency. In the mercury-free lamps, the flat fluorescent lamps of transverse discharge having a high pressure ${\sim}100\;Torr$ with the pure Xe-gas are verified to be suggestable.