• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.186-190
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• 2008

In this study, we describe the preliminary application for the delineation of a metal object using cone-beam reconstruction (CBR) based on limited electronic portal imaging device (EPID) projections. A typical Feldkamp, Davis and Kress (FDK) reconstruction algorithm accompanying the edge preserving smoothing filter was used as only a few projections are acquired for reconstruction. In a correlation study of the projection numbers, we found that the size of the seeds and their location depicted by these CBR images were almost identical. Limited views were used for CBR, and our method is inexpensive and competitive for use in clinical applications.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2023

Function of salivary gland and saliva composition can be an indicator of individual's health status. Recently, saliva has been thought to have a high potential for usage in the biomedical field to diagnose, evaluate, and prevent systemic health due to the technological advances in analyzing and detecting small elements such as immunological and metabolic products, viruses, microorganisms, hormones in saliva. As a diagnostic specimen, saliva has some useful advantages compared to serum. Because of simple non-invasive method, saliva sampling is quite comfort for the patient, and it doesn't require specialists to collect samples. The possibility of infection during the collection process is also low. For this reason, proteins, genetic materials, and various biomarkers in saliva are actively being utilized on studying stress, microbiomics, genetics, and epigenetics. For the research on collecting big data related to systemic health, the needs on biobank has been focused. Regeneration of salivary gland based on tissue engineering has been also on advancement. However, there are still many issues to be solved, such as the standardization of sample collection, storage, and usage. This review focuses on the recent trends in the field of saliva research and highlight the future perspectives in biomedical and other applications.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.159-168
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• 1999

Cardiac disease is one of the leading causes of death in Korea. In quantitative analysis of cardiac function and morphological information by three-dimensional reconstruction of magnetic resonance images, left ventricle provides an important role functionally and physiologically. However, existing procedures mostly rely on the extensive human interaction and are seldom evaluated on clinical applications. In this study, we developed a system which could perform automatic extraction of enpicardial and endocardial contour and analysis of cardiac function to evaluate reliability and stability of each system comparing with the result of ARGUS system offered 1.5T Siemens MRI system and manual method performed by clinicians. For various aspects, we investigated reliability of each system by compared with left ventricular contour, end-diastolic volume (EDV), end-systolic volume (ESV), stock volume (SV), ejection fraction (EF), cardiac output (CO) and wall thickness (WT). When comparing with manual method, extracted results of developed process using minimum error threshold (MET) method that automatically extracts contour from cardiac MR images and ARGUS system were demonstrated as successful rate 90% of the contour extraction. When calculating cardiac function parameters using MET and comparing with using correlation coefficients analysis method, the process extracts endocardial and epicardial contour using MET, values from automatic and ARGUS method agreed with manual values within :t 3% average error. It was successfully demonstrated that automatic method using threshold technique could provide high potential for assessing of each parameters with relatively high reliability compared with manual method. In this study, the method developed in this study could reduce processing time compared with ARGUS and manual method due to a simple threshold technique. This method is useful for diagnosis of cardiac disease, simulating physiological function and amount of blood flow of left ventricle. In addition, this method could be valuable in developing automatic systems in order to apply to other deformable image models.

• Development and Reproduction
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.41-52
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• 2011

In the present study, embryoid bodies (EBs) obtained from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) were induced to differentiate into germ lineage cells by treatment with bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4) and retinoic acid (RA). The results were compared to the results for embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and multipotent spermatogonial stem cells (mSSCs) and quantified using immunocytochemical analysis of germ cell-specific markers (integrin-${\alpha}6$, GFR-${\alpha}1$, CD90/Thy1), fluorescence activating cell sorting (FACS), and real time-RT-PCR. We show that the highest levels of germ cell marker-expressing cells were obtained from groups treated with 10 ng/$m{\ell}$ BMP4 or 0.01 ${\mu}M$ RA. In the BMP4-treated group, GFR-${\alpha}1$ and CD90/Thy-1 were highly expressed in the EBs of iPSCs and ESCs compared to EBs of mSSCs. The expression of Nanog was much lower in iPSCs compared to ESCs and mSSCs. In the RA treated group, the level of GFR-${\alpha}1$ and CD90/Thy-1 expression in the EBs of mSSCs Induced pluripotent stem cells, Mouse embryonic stem cells, Multipotent spermatogonial stem cells, Germ cell lineage, Differentiation potential. was much higher than the levels found in the EBs of iPSCs and similar to the levels found in the EBs of ESCs. FACS analysis using integrin-${\alpha}6$, GFR-${\alpha}1$, CD90/Thy1 and immunocytochemistry using GFR-${\alpha}1$ antibody showed similar gene expression results. Therefore our results show that iPSC has the potential to differentiate into germ cells and suggest that a protocol optimizing germ cell induction from iPSC should be developed because of their potential usefulness in clinical applications requiring patient-specific cells.

• Journal of Radiopharmaceuticals and Molecular Probes
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.20-26
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• 2020

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a powerful detection technique with the exquisite sensitivity and high precision compared with other traditional analytical techniques. Accelerator mass spectrometry can be widely applied in the technique of radiocarbon dating in the fields of archeology, geology and oceanography. The ability of accelerator mass spectrometry to measure rare ¹⁴C concentrations in microgram and even sub-microgram amounts suggests that extension of ¹⁴C-accelerator mass spectrometry to biomedical field is a natural and attractive application of the technology. Drug development processes are costly, risky, and time consuming. However, the use of ¹⁴C-accelerator mass spectrometry allows absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME) studies easier to understand pharmacokinetics of drug candidates. Over the last few decades, accelerator mass spectrometry and its applications to preclinical/clinical trials have significantly increased. For accelerator mass spectrometry analysis of biological samples, graphitization processes of samples are important. In this paper, we present a detailed sample preparation procedure to apply to graphitization of biological samples for accelerator mass spectrometry.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.89-99
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• 2001

Purpose: In this study, we developed a new software tool for the analysis of renal scintigraphy which can be modified more easily by a user who needs to study new clinical applications, and the appropriateness of the results from our program was studied. Materials and Methods: The analysis tool was programmed with IDL5.2 and designed for use on a personal computer running Windows. For testing the developed tool and studying the appropriateness of the calculated glomerular filtration rate (GFR), $^{99m}Tc$-DTPA was administered to 10 adults in normal condition. In order to study the appropriateness of the calculated mean transit time (MTT), $^{99m}Tc-DTPA\;and\;^{99m}Tc-MAG3$ were administered to 11 adults in normal condition and 22 kidneys were analyzed. All the images were acquired with ORBITOR. the Siemens gamma camera. Results: With the developed tool, we could show dynamic renal images and time activity curve (TAC) in each ROI and calculate clinical parameters of renal function. The results calculated by the developed tool were not different statistically from the results obtained by the Siemens application program (Tmax: p=0.68, Relative Renal Function: p:1.0, GFR: p=0.25) and the developed program proved reasonable. The MTT calculation tool proved to be reasonable by the evaluation of the influence of hydration status on MTT. Conclusion: We have obtained reasonable clinical parameters for the evaluation of renal function with the software tool developed in this study. The developed tool could prove more practical than conventional, commercial programs.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.217-222
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• 1995

We propose some applications of image processing techniques to extract quantitative measurements by using a camera system developed in Korea university and Catholic Medical School. From now on the system will be called as KCMOTION. The purpose of this study is to provide basic kinematic and kinetic data for the analysis of human movements and to find the clinical usefulness and reliability of the proposed motion analysis system. Two tests, sit-to-stand (STS) movements and pendulum test, are conducted by the system. The aims of the tests are to identify variability and reliability of KCMOTION to give some quantitative comparisons to the other systems. The result of STS movement are compared to the LOCUS IIID motion analyzer by the ratio of maximum flexion movement per body weight to the actual maximum flexion extension torque per body weight. That result in 29 % and 33 % for hip and knee joint, respectively in KCMOTION and 27 % and 30 % in LOCUS IIID System. The results of the pendulum movements are compared to that of using Cybex and Electrogoniometer with relaxation index, amplitude ratio, swing number and swing time. The results of relaxation index and amplitude ratio of the KCMOTION are between those of the Cybex and Electrogoniometer. We also observed that the KCMOTION detect more natural movement, from the results of swing number and time.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.24 no.8
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• pp.1000-1011
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• 2021

In recent years, using Deep Learning methods to apply for medical and biomedical image analysis has seen many advancements. In clinical, using Deep Learning-based approaches for cancer image analysis is one of the key applications for cancer detection and treatment. However, the scarcity and shortage of labeling images make the task of cancer detection and analysis difficult to reach high accuracy. In 2015, the Unet model was introduced and gained much attention from researchers in the field. The success of Unet model is the ability to produce high accuracy with very few input images. Since the development of Unet, there are many variants and modifications of Unet related architecture. This paper proposes a new approach of using Unet++ with pretrained EfficientNet as backbone architecture for breast tumor cell nuclei segmentation and uses the multi-organ transfer learning approach to segment nuclei of breast tumor cells. We attempt to experiment and evaluate the performance of the network on the MonuSeg training dataset and Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) testing dataset, both are Hematoxylin and Eosin (H & E)-stained images. The results have shown that EfficientUnet++ architecture and the multi-organ transfer learning approach had outperformed other techniques and produced notable accuracy for breast tumor cell nuclei segmentation.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.264-274
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• 2023

Purpose: The objective is to extract insights that can contribute to the formulation of harmonized international policies and support measures for innovative medical devices and management systems. This study aims to propose effective strategies for future medical device innovation and healthcare delivery. Results: It investigates technological advancements, regulatory approval systems, insurance policies, and successful commercialization cases in South Korea, the United States, and the European Union. In 2018, the FDA implemented insurance coverage for Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) and recognized insurance coverage for Digital Therapeutics (DTx). Germany is a country that ensures permanent reimbursement for healthcare applications since 2020, making it the first country to provide legal health insurance coverage for fostering a digital ecosystem. Conclusion: The findings of this research highlight the importance of cultivating a supportive regulatory and environmental framework to facilitate the adoption of innovative medical devices. Continuous support for research and development (R&D) efforts by companies, along with the validation of clinical effectiveness, is crucial.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.164-171
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• 2008

Recently, many of hospitals have hurried to computerize the resulting data from medical devices, in order to introduce Electric Medical Record(EMR). In terms of the linkage between medical devices and hospital information systems, however, many difficulties have arisen due to some reasons such as the variety of prescription input, the format difference of the resulting data sheet, and the interface difference between medical devices from different companies. To solve these problems, many researches on standardization of the resulting data of medical devices have been performed. In this study, the linkage between hospital information systems and resulting datum in Electrocardiogram(ECG) generating biosignal waveform was tested by applying Medical waveform Format Encoding Rules(MFER) Version 1.02, which has more advantages than existing global standard. MFER viewer, in addition, was made to display the resulting data on a screen. The MFER viewer was tested and compared to the existing Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Viewer. The results showed that this method is more effective in the interface the data storage and application, because of simplicity and easiness in data applications. And the results show that the MFER is convenience and effective for physician. It is considered that the role of MFER as the interface in biosignal waveform including Electrocardiogram medical devices would expand in the near future.