• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.203-209
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• 2013

Digital Radiography (DR) has improved a quality of resolution based on a wide dynamic range, high detective quantum efficiency (DQE), and modulation transfer function (MTF), compared with film/screen(F/s). Unlike expectation that a low level of radiation can be used in examination, high level of signal to noise ratio(SNR) due to over-exposure caused increase of exposed dose to patients. Also, the auto exposure control (AEC) using Kilovolage(kVp) in F/S can cause over-exposure. Hence, in this study, we proposed a proper method for using DR, in which effect of tubing Kilovolage on device's image, DR MTF measurement with changes of tubing current (mA), and the quantitative evaluation of skull phantom captured images' PSNR were evaluated. Changes of contrast with tubing Kilovolage can be improved by retouching, and MTF changes according to tubing current(1.41~1.39 lp/mm in 50% area, and 3.19~2.8 lp/mm in 10% area) does not influence on resolution of image. As a result, high tubing Kilovoltage, and tubing current will be suitable to use of DR.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.83 no.2
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• pp.344-359
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• 2022

Purpose To develop a denoising convolutional neural network-based image processing technique and investigate its efficacy in diagnosing breast cancer using low-dose mammography imaging. Materials and Methods A total of 6 breast radiologists were included in this prospective study. All radiologists independently evaluated low-dose images for lesion detection and rated them for diagnostic quality using a qualitative scale. After application of the denoising network, the same radiologists evaluated lesion detectability and image quality. For clinical application, a consensus on lesion type and localization on preoperative mammographic examinations of breast cancer patients was reached after discussion. Thereafter, coded low-dose, reconstructed full-dose, and full-dose images were presented and assessed in a random order. Results Lesions on 40% reconstructed full-dose images were better perceived when compared with low-dose images of mastectomy specimens as a reference. In clinical application, as compared to 40% reconstructed images, higher values were given on full-dose images for resolution (p < 0.001); diagnostic quality for calcifications (p < 0.001); and for masses, asymmetry, or architectural distortion (p = 0.037). The 40% reconstructed images showed comparable values to 100% full-dose images for overall quality (p = 0.547), lesion visibility (p = 0.120), and contrast (p = 0.083), without significant differences. Conclusion Effective denoising and image reconstruction processing techniques can enable breast cancer diagnosis with substantial radiation dose reduction.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.987-994
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• 2019

Low energy x-rays that occur in the low tube voltage radiography of general radiography are absorbed strongly in the body and do not aid image quality enhancement. This study maintains titer in general radiography while using tube current that are proportional to density and the tube voltage 15% principle according to density to reduce patient exposure doses, and area doses and entrance surface doses were measured to compare patient exposure doses. In hand, knee, abdomen, and skull radiography, kVp was increased to 115% and mAs was decreased to 50% and kVp was decreased to 85% while mAs was increased to 200% and area doses and entrance surface doses were measured to compare relative doses. Also, 5 places in each image were set, density was measured, and Kruskal wallis H test was conducted to observe significance probabilities between groups. To fix density, kVp was increased to 115% and mAs was decreased to 50% and after measurements of mean area doses and entrance surface doses were made by each part, each decreased to 58.68% and 59.85% when standard doses were set to 100%, and each increased to 147.28% and 159.9% when kVp was decreased to 85% and mAs was increased to 200%. Comparisons of density changes showed that hand, knee, abdomen, and skull radiography all displayed significance probabilities>0.05, showing no changes in concentration. Radiography that increases kVp and lowers mAs through reasonable calculations within ranges that don't affect resolution and contrast seems to be a simple way to decrease patient exposure doses.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.73-80
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• 2012

Recently, medical equipments are developed and used for diagnosis or studies. In addition, demand of techniques which automatically deal with three dimensional medical images obtained from the medical equipments is growing. One of the techniques is automatic bone segmentation which is expected to enhance the diagnosis efficiency of osteoporosis, fracture, and other bone diseases. Although various researches have been proposed to solve it, they are unable to be used in practice since a size of the medical data is large and there are many low contrast boundaries with other tissues. In this paper, we present a fast and accurate automatic framework for bone segmentation based on multi-resolutions. On a low resolution step, a position of the bone is roughly detected using constrained branch and mincut which find the optimal template from the training set. Then, the segmentation and the registration are iteratively conducted on the multiple resolutions. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we make an experiment with femur and tibia from 50 test knee magnetic resonance images using 100 training set. The proposed method outperformed the constrained branch and mincut in aspect of segmentation accuracy and implementation time.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.25-32
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• 2009

To find out proper photographing conditions in the chest DR imaging, the evaluation of images using the C-D phantom was carried out on relationship of identification capability, graininess, and exposure ratio. The conclusions were obtained as follows. 1. The patient's entrance skin Exposure (ESE) was decreased as tube voltage was increased. 2. According to the tube voltage change, the C-D phantom's identification capability of the exposure conditions was most visible at 110 kVp. 3. The identification capability according to the exposure ratio (mAs) change was most visible at 90 kVp for 0.5 times of low exposure ratio and at 110 kVp for 1.5 times. Therefore, it is known that the images were able to be better identified at a high exposure than a low exposure. 4. The graininess according to the exposure ratio at tube voltage of 110 kVp resulted in the best thing at 1.5 times of ratio when the exposure ratio was 1.5 times increased and the tube voltage was changed, the graininess showed the best result at 110 kVp. Therefore, the patient's exposure dose was low when kVp was increased and the adequate kVp was found to be 110. The image was better identified when exposure ratio was 1.5 times compared to 1.0 times. The graininess was also good when the exposure ratio became 1.5 times. The tube voltage was good at 110 kVp. However, once the exposure ratio is increased, the amount of radiation dose that the patients received get increased, so that the exposure condition has to be thoroughly considered.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.59-70
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• 2015

Purpose - This study aims to suggest strategies for Korean enterprises advancing into the Vietnam bakery market by analyzing the effects of perceived values on brand preference and purchase intention among Korean and Vietnamese consumers. Research design, data, and methodology - The perceived value model designed includes functional (price, quality), emotional, and social values. The survey collected data from 500 consumers in Seoul (Korea) and HoChiMinh (Vietnam). The SPSS 18.0 package was used for analysis. Results - First, among Vietnamese consumers, perceived value had a positive (+) effect on global brand preference in the order of functional value of quality, social value, and the functional value of price. However, from an ethnocentric trend and brand image origin, emotional value had a negative effect on global brand preference. In contrast, among Korean consumers, perceived value had a positive (+) effect on global brand preference in the order of functional value of quality, the functional value of price, and the social value. However, emotional value had no effect on global brand preference. Second, for both Korean and Vietnamese consumers, perceived value had a significant positive effect on purchase intention. Third, unlike the Korean consumer, for the Vietnamese consumer, global brand preference had a significant effect on purchase intention. Conclusions - The study implies the following. First, the Vietnamese bakery market has a high proportion of middle-aged customers in their 40s (64%). In terms of monthly income, there was a large proportion (40%) of high-income earners (over $325). Therefore, bakery consumption can be seen as concentrated among middle-aged and high-income consumers. Based on this, bakery strategies should include efforts to increase purchase prices as well as ways to attract local consumers (large cities). Second, unlike Korean consumers, among Vietnamese consumers, the resistance to a global brand based on emotional value (the ethnocentric tendency and brand image origin) can be seen as relatively low. Thus, in the case of the Vietnam bakery market, to increase a global brand's preference, the company should develop a differentiated strategy so that Vietnamese consumers can recognize it better, focusing on product quality, good service quality, and price in the local environment and on social value for social development. Third, in the case of the Vietnamese customer, we found that social value exerts the greatest influence on purchase intention. Therefore, a brand that engenders an image of building the local Vietnamese community can achieve a higher social value and influence purchase intention. In addition, although Vietnamese consumers have ethnocentric tendencies in terms of products, we found that if it is a preferred global brand then there are intentions to purchase. Fourth, in the case of Vietnam, if the preference for global brands is formed, consumer awareness may be connected to purchase intention. Therefore, global brands operating in Vietnam should pay attention to how to improve consumer preferences for global brands in order to increase purchase intention.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.113-119
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• 2007

It is important to consider the contrast of object in Mammography because an absorption gap between tissues of body and breast in breast is low. This study is to evaluate MTF image with resolution chart according to change of combination of target and filter. The results were as follows : 1. There were significant differences in X-ray energy according to combination of filter(Mo/Mo, Mo/Rh. Mo/Al, Rh/Rh, Rh/Al) and acrylic thickness(2 cm, 3 cm, 4 cm). 2. The value of lp/mm on MTF to 0.5 showed that the sharpness in MTF curve was 2.4 compared to Mo/Mo and 2cm acryl, 2.63 in Mo/Rh and 4 cm acryl, and 2.9 in Rh/Rh and 6cm acryl. 3. The value of lp/mm on MTF showed that the resolution in MTF curve was 6.0 compared to Mo/Mo and 2 cm acryl, 4.60 in Rh/Al and 4cm acryl, and 6.03 in Rh/Al and 6 cm acryl. 4. The value of MTF on 2.5 lp/mm distinguishable visually was 0.48 compared to Mo/Mo and 2 cm acryl, 0.53 in Mo/Rh and 4cm acryl, and 0.59 in Rh/Rh and 6cm acryl. 5. For the evaluation of an image of the mammo-phantom, the score of Mo/Mo was 12 points, Mo/Rh 11, Rh/Rh 10.5, Mo/Al 10, Rh/Al 9.0, respectively.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.102-112
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• 2013

In this paper, two step processing method of contour extraction and complement which contain hexagonal shape for low contrast and noisy images is proposed. This method is based on the combination of Laplacian-Gaussian filter and an idea of filters which are dependent on the shape. At the first step, an algorithm which has six masks as its extractors to extract the hexagonal edges especially in the corners is used. Here, two tricorn filters are used to detect the tricorn joints of hexagons and other four masks are used to enhance the line segments of hexagonal edges. As a natural image, a corneal endothelial cell image which usually has regular hexagonal form is selected. The edge extraction of hexagonal shapes in corneal endothelial cell is important for clinical diagnosis. The proposed algorithm and other conventional methods are applied to noisy hexagonal images to evaluate each efficiency. As a result, this proposed algorithm shows a robustness against noises and better detection ability in the aspects of the output signal to noise ratio, the edge coincidence ratio and the extraction accuracy factor as compared with other conventional methods. At the second step, the lacking part of the thinned image by an energy minimum algorithm is complemented, and then the area and distribution of cells which give necessary information for medical diagnosis are computed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.751-759
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• 2023

Breast ultrasonography is difficult to image in fatty breasts and to find micro-calcification, but the discovery of micro-calcification is very important for breast cancer screening. Among the color Doppler artifact of ultrasound, twinkle artifact mainly occur on strong reflectors such as stones or calcification in images, and evaluation methods using them are clinically being used. In this study, we are conducting experiments on the color Doppler settings of ultrasound equipment, such as repetition frequency, ensemble, persist, wall filtering, smoothing, linear density, and dissociation value, by producing a breast simulation phantom using the largest amount of calcium phosphate among breast implants. The purpose of this study was to improve the contrast of twinkle artifact in breast ultrasound examinations and to maximize their use in clinical practice. As a result, the pulse repetition frequency occurred in the range of 3.6 kHz to 7.2 kHz, and did not occur above 10.5 kHz. For ensembles, twinkle artifact occurred in all sizes of calcification under low conditions, and in threshold settings, the twinkle artifact increased slightly only under 80 to 100 conditions, and did not occur in 1 mm size calcification. Persist, wall filter, smoothing, and line density settings did not have much meaning in the setting variable because conditions did not increase by condition, and pulse repetition frequency, ensemble, and thresholds had the greatest impact on the twinkling artifact image. This study is expected to help examiners select optimal conditions to effectively increase twinkle artifact by adjusting color Doppler settings.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.108-116
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• 2006

Purpose : High-resolution spiral-scan imaging is performed at 3 Tesla MRI system. Since the gradient waveforms for the spiral-scan imaging have lower slopes than those for the Echo Planar Imaging (EPI), they can be implemented with the gradient systems having lower slew rates. The spiral-scan imaging also involves less eddy currents due to the smooth gradient waveforms. The spiral-scan imaging method does not suffer from high specific absorption rate (SAR), which is one of the main obstacles in high field imaging for rf echo-based fast imaging methods such as fast spin echo techniques. Thus, the spiral-scan imaging has a great potential for the high-speed imaging in high magnetic fields. In this paper, we presented various high-resolution images obtained by the spiral-scan methods at 3T MRI system for various applications. Materials and Methods : High-resolution spiral-scan imaging technique is implemented at 3T whole body MRI system. An efficient and fast higher-order shimming technique is developed to reduce the inhomogeneity, and the single-shot and interleaved spiral-scan imaging methods are developed. Spin-echo and gradient-echo based spiral-scan imaging methods are implemented, and image contrast and signal-tonoise ratio are controlled by the echo time, repetition time, and the rf flip angles. Results : Spiral-scan images having various resolutions are obtained at 3T MRI system. Since the absolute magnitude of the inhomogeneity is increasing in higher magnetic fields, higher order shimming to reduce the inhomogeneity becomes more important. A fast shimming technique in which axial, sagittal, and coronal sectional inhomogeneity maps are obtained in one scan is developed, and the shimming method based on the analysis of spherical harmonics of the inhomogeneity map is applied. For phantom and invivo head imaging, image matrix size of about $100{\times}100$ is obtained by a single-shot spiral-scan imaging, and a matrix size of $256{\times}256$ is obtained by the interleaved spiral-scan imaging with the number of interleaves of from 6 to 12. Conclusion : High field imaging becomes increasingly important due to the improved signal-to-noise ratio, larger spectral separation, and the higher BOLD-based contrast. The increasing SAR is, however, a limiting factor in high field imaging. Since the spiral-scan imaging has a very low SAR, and lower hardware requirements for the implementation of the technique compared to EPI, it is suitable for a rapid imaging in high fields. In this paper, the spiral-scan imaging with various resolutions from $100{\times}100$ to $256{\times}256$ by controlling the number of interleaves are developed for the high-speed imaging in high magnetic fields.