• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.329-334
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• 2004

The electronic nose (E-nose) recently finds its applications in medical diagnosis, specifically on detection of diabetes, pulmonary or gastrointestinal problem, or infections by examining odors in the breath or tissues with its odor characterizing ability. The odor recognition performance of E-nose can be improved by manipulating the sensor array responses of vapors in time-profile forms. The different chemical interactions between the sensor materials and the volatile organic compounds (VOC's) leave unique marks in the signal profiles giving more information than collection of the conventional piecemal features, i.e., maximum sensitivity, signal slopes, rising time. In this study, to use them in vapor recognition task conveniently, a novel time-profile method was proposed, which is adopted from digital image pattern matching. The degrees of matching between 8 different vapors were evaluated by using the proposed method. The test vapors are measured by the silicon-based gas sensor array with 16 CB-polymer composites installed in membrane structure. The results by the proposed method showed clear discrimination of vapor species than by the conventional method.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.383-389
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• 2004

A commercially pure Ti(CP-Ti) and Ti-25wt％Pd alloy for dental applications were cast into a phosphate-bonded Al$_2$ $O_3$/ $SiO_2$ investment mold and the surface of the casting specimens were investigated by means of SEM/EDS, XRD and XPS. The addition of 25wt％Pd in CP-Ti showed a moderate mold reaction owing to the considerable lowering of melting point. XRD analysis of the investment after burn-out treatment revealed that it consisted essentially of $SiO_2$, Al$_2$ $O_3$, P$_2$O$\_$5/, Mg$_3$(P $O_4$)$_2$, AlP $O_4$, Mg$_2$ $SiO_4$, MgAl$_2$ $O_4$ The mold reaction products were Ti$\_$5/Si$_3$ and Ti $O_2$ in case of CP-Ti casting and Ti $O_2$ and SiO$\_$x/ in case of Ti-25wt％ Pd casting.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.586-592
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• 2012

Iron oxides ($Fe_3O_4$) are metabolically secreted after endocytosed by cells, indicating no cytotoxicity. Therefore, they are widely used as a contrast agent before photographing of magnetic resonance imaging. In this study, iron oxide nanoparticles are synthesized by the co-precipitation method and subsequently immobilized with a homing peptide (AP), which specifically interacts with interleukin-4 receptor located on the membrane of endothelial and bladder cancer cells. The size of AP-immobilized iron oxide particle is about 39 nm. Intracellular uptake of the AP-immobilized iron oxide nanoparticles was investigated using bladder cancer cells and fibroblasts as the control. As the result, the nanoparticles are specificially uptaken by bladder cancer cells. However, the nanoparticles are not specificially uptaken by fibroblast. It could be said that the AP-immobilized iron oxide nanoparticles have a potential to be used as a contrast agent for early diagnosis of cancer.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetics Society
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.102-106
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• 2006

Magnetic nanoparticles can be used for a variety of biomedical applications. They can be used in the targeted delivery of therapeutic agents in vivo, in the hyperthermic treatment of cancers. in magnetic resonance (MR) imaging as contrast agents and in the biomagnetic separations of biomolecules. We have synthesized magnetite $(Fe_3O_4)$ nanoparticles using chemical coprecipitation technique with sodium oleate as surfactant. Nanoparticle size can be varied from 2 to 8nm by controlling the sodium oleate concentration. Magnetite phase nanoparticles could be observed from X-ray diffraction. Magnetic colloid suspensions containing particles with sodium oleate and chitosan have been prepared. Nanoparticles, both oleate-coated and chitosan-coated, have been characterized by several techniques. Atomic farce microscope (AFM) was used to image the coated nanoparticles. Magnetic hysteresis measurement were performed using a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer at room temperature to investigate the magnetic properties of the magnetite nanoparticles. The SQUID measurements revealed superparamagnetism of nanoparticles.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.245-250
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• 2011

Parallel imaging technique can provide several advantages for a multitude of MRI applications. Especially, in SENSE technique, sensitivity maps were always required in order to determine the reconstruction matrix, therefore, a number of difference approaches using sensitivity information from coils have been demonstrated to improve of image quality. Moreover, many filtering methods were proposed such as adaptive matched filter and nonlinear diffusion technique to optimize the suppression of background noise and to improve of image quality. In this study, we performed SENSE reconstruction using computer simulations to confirm the most suitable method for the feasibility of filtering effect and according to changing order of polynomial fit that were applied on variation of spatial resolution of sensitivity map. The image was obtained at 0.32T(Magfinder II, Genpia, Korea) MRI system using spin-echo pulse sequence(TR/TE = 500/20 ms, FOV = 300 mm, matrix = $128{\times}128$, thickness = 8 mm). For the simulation, obtained image was multiplied with four linear-array coil sensitivities which were formed of 2D-gaussian distribution and the image was complex white gaussian noise was added. Image processing was separated to apply two methods which were polynomial fitting and filtering according to spatial resolution of sensitivity map and each coil image was subsampled corresponding to reduction factor(r-factor) of 2 and 4. The results were compared to mean value of geomety factor(g-factor) and artifact power(AP) according to r-factor 2 and 4. Our results were represented while changing of spatial resolution of sensitivity map and r-factor, polynomial fit methods were represented the better results compared with general filtering methods. Although our result had limitation of computer simulation study instead of applying to experiment and coil geometric array such as linear, our method may be useful for determination of optimal sensitivity map in a linear coil array.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.33 no.8
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• pp.718-729
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• 2006

There has been increasing interest in automatic term recognition (ATR), which recognizes technical terms for given domain specific texts. ATR is composed of 'term extraction', which extracts candidates of technical terms and 'term selection' which decides whether terms in a term list derived from 'term extraction' are technical terms or not. 'term selection' is a process to rank a term list depending on features of technical term and to find the boundary between technical term and general term. The previous works just use statistical features of terms for 'term selection'. However, there are limitations on effectively selecting technical terms among a term list using the statistical feature. The objective of this paper is to find effective features for 'term selection' by considering various aspects of technical terms. In order to solve the ranking problem, we derive various features of technical terms and combine the features using machine-learning algorithms. For solving the boundary finding problem, we define it as a binary classification problem which classifies a term in a term list into technical term and general term. Experiments show that our method records 78-86% precision and 87%-90% recall in boundary finding, and 89%-92% 11-point precision in ranking. Moreover, our method shows higher performance than the previous work's about 26% in maximum.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.437-442
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• 2013

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of drive-assisting system in a shower carrier on the upper body muscle activities of caregivers through drivability tests. Background: In care facilities, one of the major ADL (Activities of Daily Living) factors is bathing/showering. Recently, bath/shower-assisting equipment is actively being introduced in care facilities to reduce caregivers' muscle burden. In particular, it is desirable to utilize a shower carrier equipped with drive-assisting system to effectively care for the elderly. However, there were few systematic studies on the relationship between muscle activities and drive-assisting speeds. Method: For the drivability tests to study the effects on the muscle activities according to the drive-assisting speeds(corresponding drive-voltages: 0.0V, 2.0V, 2.1V, 2.3V), 6 females in their 40s($43{\pm}4yrs$, $157{\pm}5cm$, and $54.5{\pm}1.5kg$) were selected. To measure muscle activities of caregivers through drivability tests, 7 muscles in the upper body(TM/Trapezius Muscle, DM/Deltoid Muscle, BBM/Biceps Brachii Muscle, TBM/Triceps Brachii Muscle, ECRLM/Extensor Carpi Radialis Longus Muscle, FCUM/Flexor Carpi Ulnaris Muscle, and ESM/Erector Spinae Muscle) were selected. Results: In the TM, muscle activities were decreased as 21% compared to 0.0V, when drive-voltage 2.0V was applied, as 57% by 2.1V, and 62% by 2.3V(p<0.05), whereas 40%, 56%, and 69% of muscles activities were decreased respectively from the DM(p<0.05). Also, from the UL(BBM+TBM+ECRLM+FCUM), muscle activities were decreased by 17% with 2.0V as against 0.0V, by 47% with 2.1V, and 52% with 2.3V, whereas decreases in muscle activities from the ESM were found by 20%, 34%, and 42% respectively by 2.0V, 2.1V, and 2.3V(p<0.05). Conclusion: The muscle activities were decreased in the order of the DM, TM, ESM, and UL. As muscle activities were remarkably reduced as drive voltage were increased, it was expected to reduce the upper body muscle burden on the caregivers when using shower carriers equipped with driving-assist system. Applications: The results from this study can be applied for the development of a shower carrier including other equipment to possibly reduce the muscle burden of the caregivers.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.551-554
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• 2009

Poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) have received increasing attention in biomedical and biochemical applications because of their properties such as being water-soluble and biocompatible. In this study, a PVA/CMC hydrogel applicable to artificial cartilage was prepared by a freezing-thawing technique and a gamma-ray irradiation. The solid concentration of PVA was 7 wt% and the concentration of CMC was 4 wt%. The freezing/thawing process was repeated twice and the dose of gamma-ray irradiated was 30 kGy. Results of gelation before and after gamma-ray irradiation were similar, but the swelling degree decreased and compressive strength increased. The cytotoxicity was investigated with CCK-8 assay.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.462-469
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• 2009

This study was conducted to investigate total polyphenolic contents and reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging effects of extracts from peels of ten Jeju native citrus fruits according to the harvest from August 2006 to February 2007. Total polyphenolic contents from methanol extracts of citrus peel were the highest in Jigak (Citrus aurantium) and Hongkyool (C. tachibana) by over 200 mg% in the unmatured period, from the late August to the late September, and all the citrus peels mostly decreased while ripening. Scavenging effect of superoxide anion radical showed good correlation with total polyphenolic contents. The unmatured periods of Hongkyool and Jigak were the highest with more than 60%. Hydrogen peroxide scavenging activity was the highest in Sadoogam (C. pseudogulgul) at 73.8% in late August and the second highest activity was observed in Jigak at near 70%, and all the citrus peels decreased during ripening. Hydroxy radical scavenging activity were the highest among all the ROS scavenging activities, especially in the Jigak and Dangyooja (C. grandis) at 75.1% and 74.6%, respectively, and not much affected by increased maturity of the fruits. Nitric oxide radical scavenging activity was the highest in Bungkyool (C. platymama) at 58.4% in late February, and increased with fruit ripening. In this study, Jigak was generally the highest in the polyphenolic contents and ROS scavenging activities, so the further studies are needed for industrial applications.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.243-251
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• 1997

In this paper, we have reported two interesting flow effects arising in the TRFGE sequence using water flow phantom. First, we have shown that the TRFGE sequence is indeed not affected by "in-flow" effect from the unsaturated spins flowing into the imaging slice. Second, the enhancement of "in-plane flow" signal in the readout gradient direction was observed when the TRFGE sequence was used without flow compensation. These two results have many interesting applications in MR imaging other than fMRI. Results obtained were also compared with the results obtained by the conventional gradient echo(CGE) imaging. Experiments were performed at 4.7T MRI/S animal system (Biospec, BRUKER, Switzerland). A cylindrical phantom was made using acryl and a vinyl tube was inserted at the center(Fig. 1). The whole cylinder was filled with water doped with $MnCl_2$ and the center tube was filled with saline which flows in parallel to the main magnetic field along the tube. Tailored RF pulse was designed to have quadratic ($z^2$) phase distribution in slice direction(z). Imaging parameters were TR/TE = 55~85/10msec, flip angle = $30^{\circ}$, slice thickness = 2mm, matrix size = 256${\times}$256, and FOV= 10cm. In-flow effect : Axial images were obtained with and without flow using the CGE and TRFGE sequences, respectively. The flow direction was perpendicular to the image slice. In-plane flow : Sagittal images were obtained with and without flow using the TRGE sequence. The readout gradient was applied in parallel to the flow direction. We have observed that the "in-flow" effect did not affect the TRFGE image, while "in-plane flow" running along the readout gradient direction enhanced the signal in the TRFGE sequence when flow compensation gradient scheme was not used.