• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.15-25
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• 2018

Purpose: To compare the Appropriateness of abdominal CT to abdominal radiography as an imaging modality in terms of the diagnostic value, medical costs and decision making times for patients presented to the emergency department with nontraumatic abdominal pain. Methods: This study used the records of 530 cases presented to the emergency department(ED) with nontraumatic abdominal pain from February to March 2012. Imaging modalities were categorized into abdominal radiography and CT (radiography first or CT first) or radiography alone or CT alone. The diagnostic value, total medical costs and effect on decision making time of the each imaging modalities were compared. Especially, in retrospective review, to evaluate the predictability of the abdominal radiography, alit was assumed that all the 530 cases performed that exam as initial imaging. Results: Among 530 cases, 255 cases underwent abdominal radiography only, 28 cases underwent abdominal CT only and the remnant 247 cases underwent abdominal CT with plain abdominal radiography. The diagnostic value was higher in the cases with abdominal CT (268/275, 97.5%) than in the cases with plain abdominal radiography (19/255, 7.5%).The number of cases predicted by abdominal radiography only as initial imaging were 39/530 (7.4%). In cases where the patients performed the abdominal CT as the first imaging modality thereby omitting the abdominal radiography, the total diagnostic imaging fee was lower than in cases with plain abdominal radiography first followed by the abdominal CT (277,140 vs. 284,226(mean, Korean Won)). Although diagnostic value of the plain abdominal radiography as first imaging modality was lower than the abdominal CT, Decision making time, average duration of hospital stay was longer and the total medical costs was higher than abdominal CT. Conclusion: As an imaging modality in the ED for patients with acute nontraumatic abdominal pain, plain abdominal radiography is an avoidable procedure when viewed in terms of the diagnostic value and total medical costs and decision making times comparing with abdominal CT.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.30 no.12
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• pp.1417-1421
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• 2001

Objective : The purposes of this study are to compare imaging features with operative findings and to determine significance of imaging studies for early detection of craniosynostosis(CS). Methods : Plain radiograph of skull and three-dimensional(3D) CT reconstruction were analyzed in 10 consecutive patients with CS to assess the presence and the extent of synostosis. The radiological findings were investigated and compared with operative findings. Results : The locations of lesion were coronal suture in 6, sagittal suture in 3 and multiple sutures in one patient, and the age ranged 1 to 53 months(mean age : 17.4 months). Reconstructive procedures with or without advancement of supraorbital rim were performed in coronal CS patients and ${\pi}$-procedures or synostectomy were done in sagittal CS patients. Radi-ological abnormalities such as sutural indistinctness or sclerosis, bony ridge, bossing and other bony deformities were nearly consistent with surgical findings. Conclusion : The interpretation of imaging study are very important for early detection of craniosynostosis, especially, the plain radiographs of skull. Also 3D CT imaging is helpful in diagnosis and surgical planing of craniosynostosis. There are no significant differences between imaging features and operative findings in CS patients.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.209-217
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• 2004

Evaluation of dementia in patients with early symptoms of cognitive decline is clinically challenging, but the need for early, accurate diagnosis has become more crucial, since several medication for the treatment of mild to moderate Alzheimer' disease are available. Many neurodegenerative diseases produce significant brain function alteration even when structural imaging (CT or MRI) reveal no specific abnormalities. The role of PET and SPECT brain imaging in the initial assessment and differential diagnosis of dementia is beginning to evolve vapidly and growing evidence indicates that appropriate incorporation of PET into the clinical work up can improve diagnostic and prognostic accuracy with respect to Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause of dementia in the geriatric population. in the fast few years, studios comparing neuropathologic examination with PET have established reliable and consistent accuracy for diagnostic evaluations using PET - accuracies substantially exceeding those of comparable studies of diagnostic value of SPECT or of both modalities assessed side by side, or of clinical evaluations done without nuclear imaging. This review deals the role of functional brain imaging techniques in the evaluation of dementias and the role of nuclear neuroimaging in the early detection and diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.597-607
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• 2016

Personalized medicine is tailored medical treatment that targets the individual characteristics of each patient. Theragnosis, combining diagnosis and therapy, plays an important role in selecting appropriate patients. Noninvasive in vivo imaging can trace small molecules, antibodies, peptides, nanoparticles, and cells in the body. Recently, imaging methods have been able to reveal molecular events in cells and tissues. Molecular imaging is useful not only for clinical studies but also for developing new drugs and new treatment modalities. Preclinical and early clinical molecular imaging shows biodistribution, pharmacokinetics, mechanisms of action, and efficacy. When therapeutic materials are labeled using radioisotopes, nuclear imaging with positron emission tomography or gamma camera can be used to treat diseases and monitor therapy simultaneously. Such nuclear medicine technology is defined as radiation theragnosis. We review the current development of drugs and technology for radiation theragnosis using peptides, albumin, nanoparticles, and cells.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.30-34
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• 2009

Many studies have been done on the integral imaging pickup whose objective is to get efficiently elemental images from a lens array with respect to three-dimensional (3D) objects. In the integral imaging pickup process, it is necessary to render an elemental image from each elemental lens in a lens array for 3D objects, and then to combine them into one total image. The multiple viewpoint rendering (MVR) is one of various methods for integral imaging pickup. This method, however, has the computing and rendering time problem for obtaining element images from a lot of elemental lens. In order to solve the problems, in this paper, we propose a parallel MVR (PMVR) method to generate elemental images in a parallel through distribution of elemental lenses into multiple threads simultaneously. As a result, the computation time of integral imaging using PMVR is reduced significantly rather than a sequential approach and then we showed that the PMVR is very useful.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.1016-1023
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• 2022

In proton therapy, a highly conformal proton dose can be delivered to the tumor by means of the steep distal dose penumbra at the end of the beam range. The proton beam range, however, is highly sensitive to range uncertainty, which makes accurately locating the proton range in the patient difficult. In-vivo range verification is a method to manage range uncertainty, one of the promising techniques being prompt gamma imaging (PGI). In earlier studies, we proposed gamma electron vertex imaging (GEVI), and constructed a proof-of-principle system. The system successfully demonstrated the GEVI imaging principle for therapeutic proton pencil beams without scanning, but showed some limitations under clinical conditions, particularly for pencil beam scanning proton therapy. In the present study, we upgraded the GEVI system in several aspects and tested the performance improvements such as for range-shift verification in the context of line scanning proton treatment. Specifically, the system showed better performance in obtaining accurate prompt gamma (PG) distributions in the clinical environment. Furthermore, high shift-detection sensitivity and accuracy were shown under various range-shift conditions using line scanning proton beams.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.3-8
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• 2006

Anxiety has been suggested to be related to many neurotransmitters in brain, such as norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, cholecystokinin, and gamma-amino butyric acid. There are many studies to examine the relationship between anxiety and norepinephrine, and norepinephrine seems to be clearly related to the development of anxiety. We suggest that future studies to explore the pathophysiology of anxiety should be necessary, which include studies on antianxiety drugs, genetic studies, animal model studies, and brain imaging studies.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.241-245
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• 2001

A 16-year-old female was admitted to Wonkwang dental hospital with a chief complaint of painful ulceration on right buccal mucosa around mandibular 3rd molar area. Computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging showed relative large soft tissue mass on the infratemporal fossa and masseter muscle region. By the feature of T1-weighted and T2-weighted of MR imaging, we suspected this mass as a kind of myogenic sarcoma. Histopathological and immunohistochemical studies established a definitive diagnosis of embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma. A review of the literature was also presented.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.159-165
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• 2010

The evolution of brain imaging techniques over the last decade has been remarkable. Along with such technical developments, research into chronic pain has made many advances. Given that brain imaging is a non-invasive technique with great spatial resolution, it has played an important role in finding the areas of the brain related to pain perception as well as those related to many chronic pain disorders. Therefore, in the near future, brain imaging techniques are expected to be the key to the discovery of many unknown etiologies of chronic pain disorders and to the subjective diagnoses of such disorders.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.85-85
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• 2002

Purpose： To evaluate the white matter fiber connectivity of normal human using diffusion tensor MRI. Method： Normal young healthy volunteers (2 women and 1 man) and 3 brain tumor patients participated in this study. All studies were performed using a 1.5T Philips Gyroscan Intern system. Diffusion weighted imaging was performed using single-shot echo planar imaging, with navigator echo phase correction and SENSE. Diffusion weighting was performed along six independent axes, using diffusion weighting of b=800s/$\textrm{mm}^2$. 128matrix, 23cm FOV, 2.5mm slice thickness were used for Imaging parameters. Data were processed on a Window-2000 PC equipped with IDL and PRIDE (Philips Medical System). Corticospinal tract was traced from mid-pons level via posterior limb of internal capsule. Corpus callosum, cerebellar peduncles and frontal fibers were traced by fiber tractography.