• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.43 no.3
• /
• pp.403-409
• /
• 1996

Background : Pleural fluid collections may pose a difficult therapeutic problem. Complete drainage of complicated effusions or empyemas and reexpansion of atelectatic lung are important in obtaining a satisfactory clinical outcome. The usual approach to the diagnosis and treatment of patients with pleural effusion and empyema has been with needle thoracentesis and chest tube drainage. With chest tube drainage, technical difficulties and failures may occur as a result of improper tube drainage, particularly when there is a loculation or multiple and inaccesible collections. Fluoroscopic or sonographic guidance facilitates the proper tube insertion and drainage. Method : Twenty eight patients were required for tube drainage due to pleural fluid collections between January 1994 to February 1996. The author compared the results of drainage under applying each different method between blind chest tube insertion and image guided catheter insertion. Results : The conventional blind chest tube group comprised 14 patients; 6 empyema, 6 tuberculous effusion, and 2 parapneumonic effusion. The image guided catheter group of smaller french were composed of 14 patients; 2 empyema, 6 tuberculous effusion, 5 parapneumonic effusion, and 1 effusion of undetermined origin. Radiologic improvement with successful drainage was noticed in 79% with the blind chest tube group, whereas in 93% with the image guided catheter group. The complication with the latter method was unremarkable. Conclusion : Image guided catheter drainage was safe and highly successful in treating patients, not only with complicated effusion also with loculated empyema. Image guided catheter drainage offers an alternative in patients in whom closed drainage is required as the initial treatment.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
• /
• v.57 no.5
• /
• pp.618-624
• /
• 2013

We demonstrated unique inter- and intra-plasmonic coupling effects in bimetallic Au@Ag core-shell NP arrays which are regularly or randomly arranged on self-assembled block copolymer (BCP) inverse micelle monolayers. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)-stabilized Au@Ag core-shell NP arrays in regular or disordered configuration were incorporated and assembled on reconstructed PS-b-P4VP inverse micelle templates through two types of processes. The intensively enhanced LSPR coupling properties of individual and assembled Au@Ag NPs were evaluated by UV-visible spectroscopy in terms of the type of ligand stabilizer, coupling between Au and Ag, thickness of Ag shell, and type of array configuration. Finally, Au@Ag core-shell NP arrays were employed as active substrates for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and a significantly enhanced signal enhancement was observed in accordance with the coupling intensity of Au@Ag NPs patterns.

• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
• /
• v.28 no.5
• /
• pp.533-537
• /
• 2011

A 13-year-old, female, Shih-tzu and a 10-year-old, female, Yorkshire terrier were presented with ulcerative keratitis caused by corneal endothelial degeneration. Generalized corneal edema, conjunctival hyperemia, focal corneal pigmentation, corneal neovascularization, sub-epithelial bullae, and positive fluorescein staining were observed during ophthalmic examinations. Thermokeratoplasty was performed on the overall edematous corneas. Healing of the cornea was completed within 25 days and corneal ulceration has not recurred after healing of the cornea in both cases. Other ocular complications were not observed except for a slight increase in corneal pigmentation. According to this study, thermokeratoplasty could be an effective treatment for corneal ulceration secondary to corneal endothelial diseases in dogs.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
• /
• v.32 no.4
• /
• pp.607-618
• /
• 2019

A new and interesting task in statistics is to effectively analyze functional data that frequently comes from advances in modern science and technology in areas such as meteorology and biomedical sciences. Functional linear regression with scalar response is a popular functional data analysis technique and it is often a common problem to determine a functional association if a functional predictor variable affects the scalar response in the models. Recently, Kong et al. (Journal of Nonparametric Statistics, 28, 813-838, 2016) established classical testing methods for this based on functional principal component analysis (of the functional predictor), that is, the resulting eigenfunctions (as a basis). However, the eigenbasis functions are not generally suitable for regression purpose because they are only concerned with the variability of the functional predictor, not the functional association of interest in testing problems. Additionally, eigenfunctions are to be estimated from data so that estimation errors might be involved in the performance of testing procedures. To circumvent these issues, we propose a testing method based on fixed basis such as B-splines and show that it works well via simulations. It is also illustrated via simulated and real data examples that the proposed testing method provides more effective and intuitive results due to the localization properties of B-splines.

• Journal of Electrodiagnosis and Neuromuscular Diseases
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.106-111
• /
• 2018

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been a gold standard for investigating central motor pathways in humans. Diffusion tensor imaging with fiber tractography (DTI FT) is known for its usefulness in detecting white matter lesion in vivo. We investigated the clinical usefulness of elucidating the integrity and continuity of corticospinal tract (CST) by combined use of TMS and DTI FT in this study. We report two cases who have presented with left hemiparesis and evaluated by both TMS and DTI FT; 10-year-old boy with Mitochondrial Encephalomyopathy with Lactic Acidosis and Stroke-like episode syndrome and 20-year-old woman with traumatic brain injury. Combined use of TMS and DTI FT successfully led to localize the brain lesion that might cause motor impairment in patients with abnormal signal intensities in MRI. The results of this study suggest that TMS and DTI FT might provide the detailed information between function and anatomy of the CST, complementarily.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.453-462
• /
• 2022

In this paper, the artificial intelligence (AI) technology used in the medical image analysis field was analyzed through a literature review. Literature searches were conducted on PubMed, ResearchGate, Google and Cochrane Review using the key word. Through literature search, 114 abstracts were searched, and 98 abstracts were reviewed, excluding 16 duplicates. In the reviewed literature, AI is applied in classification, localization, disease detection, disease segmentation, and fit degree of registration images. In machine learning (ML), prior feature extraction and inputting the extracted feature values into the neural network have disappeared. Instead, it appears that the neural network is changing to a deep learning (DL) method with multiple hidden layers. The reason is thought to be that feature extraction is processed in the DL process due to the increase in the amount of memory of the computer, the improvement of the calculation speed, and the construction of big data. In order to apply the analysis of medical images using AI to medical care, the role of physicians is important. Physicians must be able to interpret and analyze the predictions of AI algorithms. Additional medical education and professional development for existing physicians is needed to understand AI. Also, it seems that a revised curriculum for learners in medical school is needed.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.587-592
• /
• 2023

Plant growth is regulated by a variety of factors, including organic matter availability. Organic nutrients are carbohydrate molecules from photosynthetic products produced by tissues associated with carbon and energy fixation called "sources". These compounds flow through plant vascular bundles into non-photosynthetic or growing tissues called "sinks". Among these possible compounds, the disaccharide fructosyl glucose, sucrose, is the most representative. During the transport of sucrose, the pathway from the source to the sinks can include hydrolysis of sucrose into glucose and fructose derivatives or direct transfer of sucrose. Among the enzymes involved in this, β-D-fructofuranosidase is the most important. Soluble neutral β-D-fructofuranosidase, one of several isoenzymes, is located in intracellular protoplasts and helps plant cells metabolize sucrose to produce energy. In order to track the activity of this enzyme during the course of plant growth, histological methods were used for the most effective immunolocalization. As a result, the activity was higher in the phloem and epidermis than in the mesophyll tissue in the leaf. In the growing stem, activity was high in the phloem, epidermis, and cortex. The activity of the root, which is a sink tissue, was high in all parts, but especially the highest in the root tip part. It is thought that this is because it helps unloading of sucrose in sink tissues that require sucrose degradation and plays a role in hydrolysising sucrose.

• Development and Reproduction
• /
• v.6 no.2
• /
• pp.131-139
• /
• 2002

Since GnRH and its receptor genes are expressed in the ovary, it has been suggested that ovarian GnRH might be involved in the regulation of ovarian function and the apoptosis of ovarian cells. However, it was not known well on the expression and function of GnRH and its receptor in the corpus luteum. The present study was undertaken to investigate whether GnRH and its receptor are expressed in luteal cells and GnRH has any effect on the apoptosis of luteal cells. Luteal cells obtained from the pregnant rats were cultured and stained for GnRH and its receptor proteins. Cultured luteal cells showed distinct immunoreactivity against both anti-GnRH and anti-GnRH receptor antibodies. In addition, the presence of GnRH receptor protein in cultured cells was confirmed by Western blot analysis. To investigate the effect of GnRH on the apoptosis of luteal cells, luteal cells were cultured in the presence of 10$^{-6}$ M GnRH-agonist(GnRH-Ag) for 3, 8, and 12h. TUNEL assay showed that the number of cells undergoing apoptosis increased 12h after culture(P<0.05). DNA fragmentation analysis confirmed the results such that the cells treated for 12h showed the greatest increase of fragmentation(p<0.05). Further, Western blot analysis of cytochrome c in the mitochondrial and cytoplasmic fractions of the luteal cells showed that GnRH-Ag treatment increased the content of cytochrome c in cytoplasm. These results demonstrate that the luteal cells express GnRH and its receptor and GnRH-Ag treatment induces apoptosis of the luteal cells via mitochondrial release of cytochrome c. The present study suggest that the releasing of cytochrome c from mitochondria might be involved in the luteal cell apoptosis induced by GnRH-Ag.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
• /
• v.11 no.1 s.30
• /
• pp.3-14
• /
• 2006

Music summarization means a technique which automatically generates the most importantand representative a part or parts ill music content. The techniques of music summarization have been studied with two categories according to summary characteristics. The first one is that the repeated part is provided as music summary and the second provides the combined segments which consist of segments with different characteristics as music summary in music content In this paper, we propose and evaluate two kinds of music summarization techniques. The algorithm using multi-level vector quantization which provides a repeated part as music summary gives fixed-length music summary is evaluated by overlapping ration between hand-made repeated parts and automatically generated summary. As results, the overlapping ratios of conventional methods are 42.2% and 47.4%, but that of proposed method with fixed-length summary is 67.1%. Optimal length music summary is evaluated by the portion of overlapping between summary and repeated part which is different length according to music content and the result shows that automatically-generated summary expresses more effective part than fixed-length summary with optimal length. The cluster-based algorithm using 2-D similarity matrix and k-means algorithm provides the combined segments as music summary. In order to evaluate this algorithm, we use MOS test consisting of two questions(How many similar segments are in summarized music? How many segments are included in same structure?) and the results show good performance.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
• /
• v.30 no.1
• /
• pp.56-64
• /
• 1996

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the characteristic perfusion changes in patients with Sturge-Weber syndrome by comparison of the findings of brain MR images and perfusion SPECT images. $^{99m}Tc$-HMPAO or $^{99m}Tc$-ECD interictal brain SPECTs were performed on 5 pediatric patients with Sturge-Weber syndrome within 2 weeks after MR imaging. Brain SPECTs of three patients without calcification showed diminished perfusion in the affected area on MR image. A 3 month-old patient without brain atrophy or calcification demonstrated paradoxical hyperperfusion in the affected hemisphere, and follow-up perfusion SPECT revealed decreased perfusion in the same area. The other patient with advanced calcified lesion and atrophy on MR image showed diffusely decreased perfusion in the affected hemisphere, but a focal area of increased perfusion was also noted in the ipsilateral temporal lobe on SPECT. In conclusion, brain perfusion of the affected area of Sturge-Weber syndrome patients was usually diminished, but early or advanced patients may show paradoxical diffuse or focal hyperperfusion in the affected hemisphere. Further studies are needed for better understanding of these perfusion changes and pathophysiology of Sturge-Weber syndrome.