• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.1179-1189
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• 2023

Objective: We aimed to evaluate the reporting quality of research articles that applied deep learning to medical imaging. Using the Checklist for Artificial Intelligence in Medical Imaging (CLAIM) guidelines and a journal with prominence in Asia as a sample, we intended to provide an insight into reporting quality in the Asian region and establish a journal-specific audit. Materials and Methods: A total of 38 articles published in the Korean Journal of Radiology between June 2018 and January 2023 were analyzed. The analysis included calculating the percentage of studies that adhered to each CLAIM item and identifying items that were met by ≤ 50% of the studies. The article review was initially conducted independently by two reviewers, and the consensus results were used for the final analysis. We also compared adherence rates to CLAIM before and after December 2020. Results: Of the 42 items in the CLAIM guidelines, 12 items (29%) were satisfied by ≤ 50% of the included articles. None of the studies reported handling missing data (item #13). Only one study respectively presented the use of de-identification methods (#12), intended sample size (#19), robustness or sensitivity analysis (#30), and full study protocol (#41). Of the studies, 35% reported the selection of data subsets (#10), 40% reported registration information (#40), and 50% measured inter and intrarater variability (#18). No significant changes were observed in the rates of adherence to these 12 items before and after December 2020. Conclusion: The reporting quality of artificial intelligence studies according to CLAIM guidelines, in our study sample, showed room for improvement. We recommend that the authors and reviewers have a solid understanding of the relevant reporting guidelines and ensure that the essential elements are adequately reported when writing and reviewing the manuscripts for publication.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.202-209
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• 2017

Background No consensus exists on the optimal treatment protocol for orofacial clefts or the optimal timing of cleft palate closure. This study investigated factors influencing speech outcomes after two-stage palate repair in adults with a non-syndromal complete unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP). Methods This was a retrospective analysis of adult patients with a UCLP who underwent two-stage palate closure and were treated at our tertiary cleft centre. Patients ${\geq}17$ years of age were invited for a final speech assessment. Their medical history was obtained from their medical files, and speech outcomes were assessed by a speech pathologist during the follow-up consultation. Results Forty-eight patients were included in the analysis, with a mean age of 21 years (standard deviation, 3.4 years). Their mean age at the time of hard and soft palate closure was 3 years and 8.0 months, respectively. In 40% of the patients, a pharyngoplasty was performed. On a 5-point intelligibility scale, 84.4% received a score of 1 or 2; meaning that their speech was intelligible. We observed a significant correlation between intelligibility scores and the incidence of articulation errors (P<0.001). In total, 36% showed mild to moderate hypernasality during the speech assessment, and 11%-17% of the patients exhibited increased nasalance scores, assessed through nasometry. Conclusions The present study describes long-term speech outcomes after two-stage palatoplasty with hard palate closure at a mean age of 3 years old. We observed moderate long-term intelligibility scores, a relatively high incidence of persistent hypernasality, and a high pharyngoplasty incidence.

• Journal of Korean Foot and Ankle Society
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.88-94
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• 2022

Purpose: This study was based on the Korean Foot and Ankle Society (KFAS) member survey and aimed to report the current trends in the epidemiology, diagnosis, and management of acute Achilles tendon rupture (AATR) over the past few decades. Materials and Methods: A web-based questionnaire containing 34 questions was sent to all KFAS members in October 2021. The questions were mainly related to the clinical experience and preferred management of patients with AATR. Answers with a prevalence ≥50% of the respondents were considered a tendency. Results: Seventy-one (12.9%) of the 550 members responded to the survey. The male sex ratio in AATR was answered mean 78%, and the most common age groups were 30~40 years (n=49; 69.0%), and 40~50 years (n=37; 52.1%), in that order. The most common seasons for the occurrence of AATR were spring (37 cases; 52.1%) and autumn (27 cases; 38.0%). Also, sports-related rupture had an average occurrence of 76.2%. The most important clinical factor to determine the type of treatment was the history of previous injuries, and 75.9% of respondents started conservative treatment in the 2010s. The most preferred protocol of conservative treatment was an orthosis capable of ankle range of motion after casting (68.5%), and 53.7% 'satisfied' and 1.9% 'very satisfied' with conservative treatment. The most preferred surgical method was open repair (80.3%), and the Krackow method (60.6%), and 49.3% of treated patients responded 'satisfied' and 45.1% 'very satisfied' with this treatment. Conclusion: This study gives updated information concerning the current trend of epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of AATR in Korea. Both consensus and variation in the approach to AATR were identified using this survey study. This study may raise the awareness of various possible approaches toward AATR and should be used to further establish a standard protocol for the management of this injury.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.22 no.12
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• pp.2094-2123
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• 2021

Incidental thyroid nodules are commonly detected on ultrasonography (US). This has contributed to the rapidly rising incidence of low-risk papillary thyroid carcinoma over the last 20 years. The appropriate diagnosis and management of these patients is based on the risk factors related to the patients as well as the thyroid nodules. The Korean Society of Thyroid Radiology (KSThR) published consensus recommendations for US-based management of thyroid nodules in 2011 and revised them in 2016. These guidelines have been used as the standard guidelines in Korea. However, recent advances in the diagnosis and management of thyroid nodules have necessitated the revision of the original recommendations. The task force of the KSThR has revised the Korean Thyroid Imaging Reporting and Data System and recommendations for US lexicon, biopsy criteria, US criteria of extrathyroidal extension, optimal thyroid computed tomography protocol, and US follow-up of thyroid nodules before and after biopsy. The biopsy criteria were revised to reduce unnecessary biopsies for benign nodules while maintaining an appropriate sensitivity for the detection of malignant tumors in small (1-2 cm) thyroid nodules. The goal of these recommendations is to provide the optimal scientific evidence and expert opinion consensus regarding US-based diagnosis and management of thyroid nodules.

• Atmosphere
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.213-227
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• 2005

The global mean surface temperature has already increased by $0.6{\pm}0.2^{\circ}C$ over the last century, and warming in Korea is approximately twice as large as the global average. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the majority of warming over the past 50 years could be attributed to human activities (IPCC, 2001a). In addition, the global surface temperature is expected to increase by 1.4 to $5.8^{\circ}C$ depending on the greenhouse gas emission scenarios during the $21^{st}$ century.Climate change resulting from increased greenhouse gas concentrations has the potential to harm societies and ecosystems. Reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and their concentration in the atmosphere will reduce the degree and likelihood of significant adverse conditions due to the anticipated climate change. Mitigation policy has generally been the primary focus of public attention and policy efforts on climate change. However, some degree of climate change is inevitable due to the combination of continued increases in emissions and the inertia of the global climate system. Adaptation actions and strategies are needed for a complementary approach to mitigation. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) currently addresses vulnerability and adaptation in the context of climate change negotiations and in future adaptation may be an important element of work under the Kyoto Protocol. There are several on-going programs to develop effective adaptation strategies and their implementation. But in general, many other countries are still on an initiating stage. The climate change science programs of the United States, Japan, England, and Germany are initiated to understand the current status of climate change science and adaptation researches in the developed countries. In this study, we propose the improvement on systems in policy and research aspects to effectively perform the necessary functions for development of nation-wide adaptation measures and their implementation. In policy aspect, the Korean Panel on Climate Change (KPCC) is introduced as a coordinating mechanism between government organizations related with climate change science, impact assessment and adaptation. Also in research aspect, there is a strong consensus on the need for construction of a national network on climate change research as trans-disciplinary research network.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.79-88
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• 2005

Quality assurance may be defined as the complete set of systemic actions that is required to achieve a better treatment result by standardizing treatment and by using various audit programs. In general, application of a quality assurance program in surgery is considered to be more difficult than it is in chemotherapy or radiotherapy. However, recently, the importance of quality assurance in the surgical field has been emphasized in clinical trials comparing different surgical procedures and evaluating the role of postoperative adjuvant therapy. In the case of gastric cancer surgery, excellent quality assurance programs have rarely been applied in most large prospective clinical trials. Although the quality assurance in Dutch trial was conducted very systemically and strictly, the situation is quite different from ours. On the other hand, several quality assurance programs in Japanese trials comparing D2 and D2 plus para-arotic lymph node dissection seem to be applicable to Korean clinical trials. Several factors, including selection of appropriate surgeons based on personal experience and annual number of operations, standardization of surgical procedures by education and consensus, development of a unified database program, application of standardized perioperative management, and standardization of pathologic examination, are required to guarantee a successful multi-institutional prospective clinical trial. In contrast, one needs to realize that protocols that are too strict and sophisticated can make the enrollment of patients and surgeons more difficult and can promote protocol violation during the clinical trials. (J Korean Gastric Cancer Assoc 2005;5:79-88)

• Research in Plant Disease
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.269-275
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• 2016

Black shoot blight disease caused by Erwinia pyrifoliae have damaged economic loss to apple and pear growers until now since it was firstly reported in 1995 in Korea. This study was performed to reduce economic loss by mandatory eradication of all infected trees in case of more 10% disease incidence per orchard as official control. It also aims to set up effective management protocol for this disease by examining how far bacterial pathogen is present from the border of symptomatic and asymptomatic regions in infected apple twigs. Colony-PCR using isolated bacterial cells instead of genomic DNA was used to identify bacterial pathogen, EpSPF/EpSPR primer designed in enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) region was selected as specific for E. pyrifoliae. As results of monitoring of this disease during April to October in 2014-2015 by colony-PCR, occurrence of this disease was frequent from mid-May to early-July, when daily average temperature was around $25^{\circ}C$. Moreover, bacterial cells were continuously detected only in symptomatic regions and also asymptomatic regions of less than 20 cm from symptomatic regions. Therefore, we concluded that pruning of infected twigs at the region of more than 20 cm from symptomatic regions might be effective to manage black shoot blight disease in apple trees.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 2020

As an important basic building block of the smart grid environment, smart meter provides real-time electricity consumption information to the utility. However, ensuring information security and privacy in the smart meter data aggregation process is a non-trivial task. Even though the secure data aggregation for the smart meter has been a lot of attention from both academic and industry researchers in recent years, most of these studies are not secure against internal attackers or cannot provide data integrity. Besides, their computation costs are not satisfactory because the bilinear pairing operation or the hash-to-point operation is performed at the smart meter system. Recently, blockchains or distributed ledgers are an emerging technology that has drawn considerable interest from energy supply firms, startups, technology developers, financial institutions, national governments and the academic community. In particular, blockchains are identified as having the potential to bring significant benefits and innovation for the electricity consumption network. This study suggests a distributed, privacy-preserving, and simple secure smart meter data aggregation system, backed up by Blockchain technology. Smart meter data are aggregated and verified by a hierarchical Merkle tree, in which the consensus protocol is supported by the practical Byzantine fault tolerance algorithm.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.550-558
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• 2019

As the scale of the Internet of Things (IoT) environment grows and develops day by day, the information collected and shared through IoT devices becomes increasingly diverse and more common. However, because IoT devices have limitations on computing power and a low power capacity due to their miniaturized size, it is difficult to apply security technologies like encryption and authentication that have been directly applied in the previous Internet environment, making the IoT vulnerable to security threats. Because of this weakness, important information that needs to be delivered safely and accurately is exposed to the threat of malicious exploitation, such as data forgery, data leakage, and infringement of personal information. In order to overcome this threat, various security studies are being actively conducted to compensate for the weaknesses in IoT environment devices. In particular, since various devices interact, and share and communicate information collected in the IoT environment, each device should be able to communicate with reliability. With regard to this, various studies have been carried out on techniques for device authentication. This study examines the limitations and problems of the authentication techniques that have been studied thus far, and proposes technologies that can certify IoT devices for safe communication between reliable devices in the Internet environment.

• Childhood Kidney Diseases
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.33-39
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• 2006

Purpose : Neonatal hydronephrosis is diagnosed with an incidence of 4.5-7% of pregnancies. Recently, early detection of neonatal hydroneprosis with antenatal ultrasonography has be-come possible. But consensus about its management has not been reached, especially concerning surgical intervention. The purpose of this study is to analyze the natural course of neonatal hydronephrosis and to determine the guideline of surgical intervention and follow up study. Methods : Sixty nine hydronephrotic kidneys were confirmed from April 2001 to April 2005. All cases were rechecked by ultrasonography once at least and had a minimum follow-up of 6 months. We classified the patients into 4 groups according to the anterior posterior pelvic diameter(APPD) on perinatal ultrasonography. Ultrasonography to measure the APPD diameter and Society for Fetal Urology(SFU) grade, $^{99m}Tc-MAG3$ scan were done to a set protocol. Pyeloplasty was peformed according to the protocol. Results : Pyeloplasty was not needed in most cases where the APPD was below 10 mm and where the SFU grade were less than grade 3. Many cases with APPD 10 mm above or SFU grade III above had undergone pyeloplasty. We found a correlation between obstruction grade on MAG3 scan and whether surgery was performed or not. Conclusion : If APPD is above 10 mm, SFU grade is above grade 3 or urinary tract obstruction is suspected by MAG3 scan, pyeloplasty must be considered. In cases where APPD is below 10mm and SFU grade is less than grade 3, we can observe the natural course of neonatal hydronephrosis with consecutive follow-up. (J Korean Soc Pediatr Nephrol 2006;10:33-39)