Joonsung Choi

fMRI analysis of excessive binocular disparity on the human brain

The aim of this study is to evaluate brain regions related with excessive binocular disparity that may be linked to stereoscopic visual fatigue. In stereoscopic displays, excessive binocular disparity may generate blurring or double vision in the stereovision and induce unnatural oscillations in accommodation and vergence. These phenomena may lead to visual fatigue and activation (or deactivation) of human brain related with sensory and eye movement functions. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) method is used to investigate the effect of excessive binocular disparity on human brain. Subjective assessments of visual fatigue are also conducted with the same stimuli as the fMRI experiment. Based on the subjective assessment results, participants are classified into low‐ and high‐fatigue groups. From the fMRI experiments, the high‐fatigue group showed more activation at the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) than the low‐fatigue group, when viewing an excessive disparity stimulus. The results showed that the excessive binocular disparity stimulus may induce overload to the IPS region, which is related with stereo processing and saccadic eye movement. In addition, it could be possible to use fMRI as an objective measurement method for understanding the stereoscopic visual fatigue when stimuli with excessive binocular disparity are applied.

The relationship between age and brain response to visual erotic stimuli in healthy heterosexual males

The various changes of sexuality, including decreased sexual desire and erectile dysfunction, are also accompanied with aging. To understand the effect of aging on sexuality, we explored the relationship between age and the visual erotic stimulation-related brain response in sexually active male subjects. Twelve healthy, heterosexual male subjects (age 22–47 years) were recorded the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals of their brain activation elicited by passive viewing erotic (ERO), happy-faced (HA) couple, food and nature pictures. Mixed effect analysis and correlation analysis were performed to investigate the relationship between the age and the change of brain activity elicited by erotic stimuli. Our results showed age was positively correlated with the activation of right occipital fusiform gyrus and amygdala, and negatively correlated with the activation of right insula and inferior frontal gyrus. These findings suggest age might be related with functional decline in brain regions being involved in both interoceptive sensation and prefrontal modulation while it is related with the incremental activity of the brain region for early processing of visual emotional stimuli in sexually healthy men.

Sex differences in interactions between nucleus accumbens and visual cortex by explicit visual erotic stimuli: an fMRI study.

Men tend to have greater positive responses than women to explicit visual erotic stimuli (EVES). However, it remains unclear, which brain network makes men more sensitive to EVES and which factors contribute to the brain network activity. In this study, we aimed to assess the effect of sex difference on brain connectivity patterns by EVES. We also investigated the association of testosterone with brain connection that showed the effects of sex difference. During functional magnetic resonance imaging scans, 14 males and 14 females were asked to see alternating blocks of pictures that were either erotic or non-erotic. Psychophysiological interaction analysis was performed to investigate the functional connectivity of the nucleus accumbens (NA) as it related to EVES. Men showed significantly greater EVES-specific functional connection between the right NA and the right lateral occipital cortex (LOC). In addition, the right NA and the right LOC network activity was positively correlated with the plasma testosterone level in men. Our results suggest that the reason men are sensitive to EVES is the increased interaction in the visual reward networks, which is modulated by their plasma testosterone level.

Sliding time of flight: sliding time of flight MR angiography using a dynamic image reconstruction method.

To obtain three‐dimensional (3D) MR angiography having high contrast between vessel and stationary background tissue, a novel technique called sliding time of flight (TOF) is proposed.

Size-controlled construction of magnetic nanoparticle clusters using DNA-binding zinc finger protein.

Nanoparticle clusters (NPCs) have attracted significant interest owing to their unique characteristics arising from their collective individual properties. Nonetheless, the construction of NPCs in a structurally well-defined and size-controllable manner remains a challenge. Here we demonstrate a strategy to construct size-controlled NPCs using the DNA-binding zinc finger (ZnF) protein. Biotinylated ZnF was conjugated to DNA templates with different lengths, followed by incubation with neutravidin-conjugated nanoparticles. The sequence specificity of ZnF and programmable DNA templates enabled a size-controlled construction of NPCs, resulting in a homogeneous size distribution. We demonstrated the utility of magnetic NPCs by showing a three-fold increase in the spin-spin relaxivity in MRI compared with Feridex. Furthermore, folate-conjugated magnetic NPCs exhibited a specific targeting ability for HeLa cells. The present approach can be applicable to other nanoparticles, finding wide applications in many areas such as disease diagnosis, imaging, and delivery of drugs and genes.

An iterative reconstruction method of complex images using expectation maximization for radial parallel MRI

In MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), signal sampling along a radial k-space trajectory is preferred in certain applications due to its distinct advantages such as robustness to motion, and the radial sampling can be beneficial for reconstruction algorithms such as parallel MRI (pMRI) due to the incoherency. For radial MRI, the image is usually reconstructed from projection data using analytic methods such as filtered back-projection or Fourier reconstruction after gridding. However, the quality of the reconstructed image from these analytic methods can be degraded when the number of acquired projection views is insufficient. In this paper, we propose a novel reconstruction method based on the expectation maximization (EM) method, where the EM algorithm is remodeled for MRI so that complex images can be reconstructed. Then, to optimize the proposed method for radial pMRI, a reconstruction method that uses coil sensitivity information of multichannel RF coils is formulated. Experiment results from synthetic and in vivo data show that the proposed method introduces better reconstructed images than the analytic methods, even from highly subsampled data, and provides monotonic convergence properties compared to the conjugate gradient based reconstruction method.

An optimal motion vector regularization method using variance-distortion curve

This paper proposes a new motion vector (MV) regularization method. We present an optimization method of the tradeoff between motion accuracy and regularity. The proposed method adopts Lagrangian multiplier and greedy algorithm for optimization. By smoothing MVs while preserving motion accuracy, the proposed method can more efficiently regularize MVs than previous regularization methods. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms previous regularization methods by generating objectively and subjectively better results.

Isotropic diffusion weighting for measurement of a high-resolution apparent diffusion coefficient map using a single radial scan in MRI

This work proposes an isotropic diffusion weighting method for a high-resolution diffusion-weighted image and for a high-resolution apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) map using a single radial scan in MRI. By using a conventional radial imaging technique, a high-resolution diffusion-weighted (DW) image can be obtained at the cost of a long imaging time. To reduce the imaging time, the proposed method acquires a DW image by altering the diffusion gradient directions for each radial spoke. The acquisition order and directions of the diffusion gradients for an accurate DW image and an ADC map are also proposed by modifying the golden angle ratio in 3D space. In addition, an individual-direction diffusion-weighted (id-DW) image can also be obtained by a diffusion gradient direction, which is one of the multiple directions used in isotropic diffusion weighting. Computer simulations and experiment results show that the proposed method is more accurate and faster than the conventional radial diffusion-weighted imaging. This study suggests that the proposed isotropic diffusion-weighted imaging can be used to obtain a DW image and a high-resolution ADC map accurately in a single radial scan, while reducing the artifacts caused by the diffusion anisotropy, compared to the diffusion-weighted echo-planar-imaging.