• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.453-458
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• 2017

Computed Tomography (CT) provides information on the Diagnostic Reference Level Computed Tomography Dose Index (CTDI) and Dose Length Product (DLP) for accurate diagnosis of patients. However, it does not provide a dose change according to the table height for the diagnostic reference level provided by the CT equipment. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the image and dose according to the table height change using phantom (PMMA: Polymethyl Methacrylate) in order to find the optimal image and the minimum dose during computed tomography examination. When examining using a 32 cm PMMA phantom with the same thickness as the abdomen of an adult, there was little change in dose with table height. However, the noise evaluation of the image caused a high fluctuation of noise depending on the table height. and in the case of the 16 cm PMMA phantom, the change of the noise was small, but the dose change was about 30%. In conclusion, the location of the patient and the center of the detector are important during computed tomography (CT) examinations. In addition, table height setting is considered to be important for examinations with optimized image and minimum dose.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.1597-1608
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• 2021

Cardiovascular computed tomography (CT) is among the most active fields with ongoing technical innovation related to image acquisition and analysis. Artificial intelligence can be incorporated into various clinical applications of cardiovascular CT, including imaging of the heart valves and coronary arteries, as well as imaging to evaluate myocardial function and congenital heart disease. This review summarizes the latest research on the application of deep learning to cardiovascular CT. The areas covered range from image quality improvement to automatic analysis of CT images, including methods such as calcium scoring, image segmentation, and coronary artery evaluation.

• Korean Journal of Digital Imaging in Medicine
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.110-118
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• 1997

Recently, to make a diagnosis of the patient different X-Ray examinations are used. To name a few, Computed Tomography(CT). Magnetic Resonance Image(MRI) Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography(SPET) and Positron Emission Tomography(PET). But diagnosticians face difficulties sometimes when they make a diagnosis with images from those examinations. One of the problem is whether the Lesions of the patient is captured in the image correctly. Another one is whether the images are taken with same angle. in this paper, a study 9 on the method to obtain the hybrid image from the different images to different examinations. The procedure done in this paper is described as future study. Although small errors in position between images would occurred, this method more useful as it does not make patients in convenient. To reconstruct a image, some images are scanned by scanner and stored to personal computer for further image processing with Aldus photostyler program. The method to generate a sharpened image are also described.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.9
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• pp.3380-3389
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• 2022

We evaluated the performance of an improved hybrid median filter (IHMF) applied to X-ray computed tomography (CT) images obtained using a high-resolution photon-counting cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detector. To study how the proposed approach improves the image quality, we measured the noise levels and the overall CT-image quality. We established a CZT imaging system with a detector length of 5.12 cm and thickness of 0.3 cm and acquired phantom images. To evaluate the efficacy of the proposed filter, we first modeled two conventional median filters. Subsequently, we were able to achieve a normalized noise power spectrum result of ~10^-8 mm², and furthermore, the proposed method improved the contrast-to-noise ratio by a factor of ~1.51 and the coefficient of variation by 1.55 relative to the counterpart values of the no-filter image. In addition, the IHMF exhibited the best performance among the three filters considered as regards the peak signal-to-noise ratio and no-reference-based image-quality evaluation parameters. Thus, our results demonstrate that the IHMF approach provides a superior image performance over conventional median filtering methods when applied to actual CZT X-ray CT images.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.4591-4596
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• 2023

Single-photon emission computed tomography SPECT image reconstruction methods have a significant influence on image quality, with filtered back projection (FBP) and ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM) being the most commonly used methods. In this study, we proposed newly-designed adaptive non-blind deconvolution with a structural similarity (SSIM) index that can take advantage of the FBP and OSEM image reconstruction methods. After acquiring brain SPECT images, the proposed image was obtained using an algorithm that applied the SSIM metric, defined by predicting the distribution and amount of blurring. As a result of the contrast to noise ratio (CNR) and coefficient of variation evaluation (COV), the resulting image of the proposed algorithm showed a similar trend in spatial resolution to that of FBP, while obtaining values similar to those of OSEM. In addition, we confirmed that the CNR and COV values of the proposed algorithm improved by approximately 1.69 and 1.59 times, respectively, compared with those of the algorithm involving an inappropriate deblurring process. To summarize, we proposed a new type of algorithm that combines the advantages of SPECT image reconstruction techniques and is expected to be applicable in various fields.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.331-337
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• 2020

Purpose: As cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) has become the most widely used 3-dimensional (3D) imaging modality in the dental field, storage space and costs for large-capacity data have become an important issue. Therefore, if 3D data can be stored at a clinically acceptable compression rate, the burden in terms of storage space and cost can be reduced and data can be managed more efficiently. In this study, a deep learning network for super-resolution was tested to restore compressed virtual CBCT images. Materials and Methods: Virtual CBCT image data were created with a publicly available online dataset (CQ500) of multidetector computed tomography images using CBCT reconstruction software (TIGRE). A very deep super-resolution (VDSR) network was trained to restore high-resolution virtual CBCT images from the low-resolution virtual CBCT images. Results: The images reconstructed by VDSR showed better image quality than bicubic interpolation in restored images at various scale ratios. The highest scale ratio with clinically acceptable reconstruction accuracy using VDSR was 2.1. Conclusion: VDSR showed promising restoration accuracy in this study. In the future, it will be necessary to experiment with new deep learning algorithms and large-scale data for clinical application of this technology.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.45-51
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was tried to remove the noise and improve the spatial resolution in the computed tomography (CT) by using anisotropic 2-dimensional (2D) diffusion based filter. We used 4-channel multi-detector CT and american association of physicists in medicine (AAPM) phantom was used for CT performance evaluation to evaluate the image quality. X-ray irradiation conditions for image acquisition was fixed at 120 kVp, 100 mAs and scanned 10 mm axis with ultra-high resolution. The improvement of anisotropic 2D diffusion filtering that we suggested firstly, increase the contrast of the image by using histogram stretching to the original image for 0.4%, and multiplying the individual pixels by 1.2 weight value, and applying the anisotropic diffusion filtering. As a result, we could distinguished five holes until 0.75 mm in the original image but, five holes until 0.40 mm in the image with improved anisotropic diffusion filter. The noise of the original image was 46.0, the noise of the image with improved anisotropic 2D diffusion filter was decreased to 33.5(27.2%). In conclusion improved anisotropic 2D diffusion filter that we proposed could remove the noise of the CT image and improve the spatial resolution.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.403-408
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• 2015

Hard X-ray has been widely used in medical and industrial fields because it can be applied to observe the inside of a sample. Computed tomography provides sectional images of the sample through the reconstruction of the projection images. The quality of sectional images strongly depends on that of projection images. Ring artifact appeared on the seconal image can be made by the abnormal pixels of the detector used. In this study, we examine the ring artifact ratio in the circle phantom as a function of detection error of the detector used in computed tomography. The ring artifact increased with the increment of detection error under parallel and fan beam geometries and strongly increased near the center of rotation. The corrections, dead pixel and flat field corrections, for the images taken with the detector are required before the image reconstruction process to reduce the ring artifact in the computed tomography.

• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.37-40
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• 2013

Background and Objectives : To assess the usefulness of computed tomography image before papillary thyroid cancer surgery, focus on confirmation of lateral cervical lymph node metastasis not detected by ultrasonography. Material and Methods : From January 2008 to May 2009, total 150 patients who had undergone thyroid surgery and been confirmed papillary thyroid cancer pathologically were enrolled. They had taken neck computed tomography following the ultrasonography. Results : Computed tomography had found suspicious metastatic lateral neck lesion in 13 patients. After the image study, lateral neck lymph node dissection had been included in their surgical plan. Of these, only 7 cases were confirmed pathologically lateral neck lymph node metastasis(positive predictive value=0.54). Taken as whole 150 patients, additionally 4.7% of patients confirmed lateral neck lymph node metastasis by preoperative computed tomography. Conclusion : If preoperative ultrasonography was performed precisely, additional benefits that could be achieved by computed tomography were not much.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.49-56
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• 2008

Purpose: Diagnostic estimation of destruction and formation of bone has the typical limit according to capacity of x-ray generator and image detector. So the aim of this study was to find out how much it can reproduce the shape and the density of bone in the case of using recently developed dental type of cone beam computed tomography, and which image is applied by new detector and mathematic calculation. Materials and Methods: Cone beam computed tomography (PSR 9000N, Asahi Roentgen Ind. Co., Ltd., Japan) and soft x-ray radiography were executed on dry mandible that was already decalcified during 5 hours, 10 hours, 15 hours, 20 hours, and 25 hours. Estimating and comparing of those came to the following results. Results: The change of inferior border of mandible and anterior border of ramus in the region of cortical bone was observed between first 5 and 10 hours of decalcification. The reproduction of shape and density in the region of cortical bone and cancellous bone can be hardly observed at cone beam computed tomography compared with soft x-ray radiography. The difference of decrease of bone density according to hours of decalcification increase wasn't reproduced at cone beam computed tomography compared with soft x-ray radiography. Conclusion: CBCT images revealed higher spatial resolution. However, contrast resolution in region of low contrast sensitivity is the inferiority of images' property.