• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.27 no.3 s.67
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• pp.241-250
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• 2006

Backgrounds: Blood stasis is hon as an important pathologic factor for vascular disorder in Oriental medicine. Despite its clinical importance there have been few objective tests for diagnosing blood stasis. Objectives: This study was designed to examine the relationship between blood stasis and arterial stiffness measured by cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI). Methods: The subjects were 104 ischemic stroke patients with onset after 14 days. Their general characteristics, lipid profiles and uric acid were recorded. The degree of arterial stiffness was assessed by CAVI, and blood stasis was evaluated by diagnostic criteria. The data were analyze4 by chi-square test, student t-test, spearman correlation analysis, and pearson correlation analysis. Then, stepwise multiple logistic regression analysis was applied in order to exclude the interactions among several factors. Results: There were significant differences in right, left and higher CAVI between the blood stasis group and the non blood stasis group (p-value<0.01). Age, systolic blood pressure, triglyceride and CAVI had relationships with blood static scores. In multiple logistic regression analysis, the adjusted odds ratio of blood stasis for arterial stiffness with CAVI above 9 were 7.091 (95% confidence interval, $1.641\sim30.638$). Conclusions: The results demonstrated the relationship between blood stasis and arterial stiffness measured by CAVI. Therefore, we suggest that CAVI should be one of the objective tests for diagnosing blood stasis.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.87-106
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• 2014

Purpose : To describe how a robust implementation of a radial 3D gradient-echo sequence with stack-of-stars sampling can be achieved, to review the imaging properties of radial acquisitions, and to share the experience from more than 5000 clinical patient scans. Materials and Methods: A radial stack-of-stars sequence was implemented and installed on 9 clinical MR systems operating at 1.5 and 3 Tesla. Protocols were designed for various applications in which motion artifacts frequently pose a problem with conventional Cartesian techniques. Radial scans were added to routine examinations without selection of specific patient cohorts. Results: Radial acquisitions show significantly lower sensitivity to motion and allow examinations during free breathing. Elimination of breath-holding reduces failure rates for non-compliant patients and enables imaging at higher resolution. Residual artifacts appear as streaks, which are easy to identify and rarely obscure diagnostic information. The improved robustness comes at the expense of longer scan durations, the requirement for fat suppression, and the nonexistence of a time-to-center value. Care needs to be taken during the configuration of receive coils. Conclusion: Routine clinical use of radial stack-of-stars sequences is feasible with current MR systems and may serve as substitute for conventional fat-suppressed T1-weighted protocols in applications where motion is likely to degrade the image quality.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.10-14
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• 2013

Purpose: Due to developed simultaneous PET/MRI, it has become possible to obtain more anatomical image information better than conventional PET/CT. By the way, in the PET/CT, the linear absorption coefficient is measured by X-ray directly. However in case of PET/MRI, the value is not measured from MRI images directly, but is calculated by dividing as 4 segmentation ${\mu}-map$. Therefore, in this paper, we will evaluate the SUV's difference of attenuation correction PET images from PET/MRI and PET/CT. Materials and Methods: Biograph mCT40 (Siemens, Germany), Biograph mMR were used as a PET/CT, PET/MRI scanner. For a phantom study, we used a solid type $^{68}Ge$ source, and a liquid type $^{18}F$ uniformity phantom. By using VIBE-DIXON sequence of PET/MRI, human anatomical structure was divided into air-lung-fat-soft tissue for attenuation correction coefficient. In case of PET/CT, the hounsfield unit of CT was used. By setting the ROI at five places of each PET phantom images that is corrected attenuation, the maximum SUV was measured, evaluated %diff about PET/CT vs. PET/MRI. In clinical study, the 18 patients who underwent simultaneous PET/CT and PET/MRI was selected and set the ROI at background, lung, liver, brain, muscle, fat, bone from the each attenuation correction PET images, and then evaluated, compared by measuring the maximum SUV. Results: For solid $^{68}Ge$ source, SUV from PET/MRI is measured lower 88.55% compared to PET/CT. In case of liquid $^{18}F$ uniform phantom, SUV of PET/MRI as compared to PET/CT is measured low 70.17%. If the clinical study, the background SUV of PET/MRI is same with PET/CT's and the one of lung was higher 2.51%. However, it is measured lower about 32.50, 40.35, 23.92, 13.92, 5.00% at liver, brain, muscle, fat, femoral head. Conclusion: In the case of a CT image, because there is a linear relationship between 511 keV ${\gamma}-ray$ and linear absorption coefficient of X-ray, it is possible to correct directly the attenuation of 511 keV ${\gamma}-ray$ by creating a ${\mu}$map from the CT image. However, in the case of the MRI, because the MRI signal has no relationship at all with linear absorption coefficient of ${\gamma}-ray$, the anatomical structure of the human body is divided into four segmentations to correct the attenuation of ${\gamma}-rays$. Even a number of protons in a bone is too low to make MRI signal and to localize segmentation of ${\mu}-map$. Therefore, to develope a proper sequence for measuring more accurate attenuation coefficient is indeed necessary in the future PET/MRI.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.17
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• pp.7351-7355
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• 2014

Background: Laryngeal carcinogenesis is a multifactorial process that has not been fully elucidated. Despite extensive research, reliable markers with diagnostic and prognostic value are still lacking. It was recently reported that an elevated preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) may correlate with an increased risk of recurrence, tumor aggressiveness and poorer prognosis in various malignancies. The aim of this study was to examine whether NLR could be used as an inflammatory marker to differentiate laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) patients from benign laryngeal lesion (BLL) and precancerous laryngeal lesion (PLL) patients. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study was performed on 209 patients admitted to a tertiary referral center with laryngeal lesions and undergoing biopsies to establish their histopathological diagnosis. We reviewed the patient files for their clinical, histopathological and laboratory data. The patients were divided into three groups according to their histopathological findings, as BLL, PLL and LSCC groups. The patients in the PLL group were also divided into three subgroups as mild, moderate and severe dysplasia/carcinoma in situ (CIS) subgroups. The groups were compared for NLR and the other laboratory data. Results: The mean NLRs of the BLL, PLL and the LSCC groups were $2.12{\pm}0.86$, $2.32{\pm}0.68$ and $3.46{\pm}1.51$, respectively, and the difference was statistically significant (p=0.001). The mean NLRs of the patients with PLL and LSCC were significantly higher than the patients with BLL (p=0.031 and p=0.001, respectively). The mean NLRs were similar among mild dysplasia, moderate dysplasia and severe dysplasia / CIS groups (p>0.05). Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first study investigating NLR in BLL, PLL and LSCC. NLR is an inexpensive, reproducible and widely available blood test, and could be a useful inflammatory marker to differentiate LSCC from BLL and PLL.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.9 no.7
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• pp.535-540
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• 2015

Collimator has important functions with control primary X-ray that decrease radiation exposure dose for patients and reduce scatter ray and make better quality of image. But there are no regulations for X-ray mammography device of collimator, so widely used device adopt rectangularly controlled collimator. Though digital X-ray mammography device expand supply recently, rectangularly controlled collimator of film/screen mode still used. After searching for real condition of beam field with digital mammography, we made a multi-leaf collimator which is able to adjust the beam field in accordance with size and shape of breast, and we measuring up the transitions of image quality, average glandular dose(AGD) and, Dose area product(DAP). There are no significant differences between rectangularly controlled collimator and multi-leaf collimator, and DAP value decreased by 50.72%. As conclusion, there needs to expand the use of multi-leaf collimator for optimum adoption of beam field in digital mammography, and also need to develop an automatic regulation of beam field for reduce of exposure dose to patients.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.589-599
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• 1989

A total of 13 synchronized dairy cattle(Holstein) were used to determine pregnancy rates in relation to plasma progesterone, estradiol-$17{\beta}$ levels and serum chemical values on the day of last $PGF_{2{\alpha}}$ injection and day of frozen/thawed bovine embryo transfer. The pregnancy rate of recipients with 1.0~4.0ng/ml of progesterone levels at the day of last $PGF_{2{\alpha}}$ injection was higher than that of recipients with below 1.0ng/ml or above 4.0ng/ml of progesterone levels. On the day of transfer, optimal progesterone levels were between 1.0ng/ml and 4.0ng/ml coinciding with a pregnancy rate of 88.9%. Pregnancy rate decreased when progesterone levels were below 1.0ng/ml(33.3%) or above 4.0ng/ml(0%). Corpus luteum grade did not affect pregnancy rate and this result revealed that manual palpation of corpus luteum was not valid criterion of corpus luteum function. Progesterone levels as well as pregnancy rate did not significantly differ whether the corpus luteum was on the right($1.62{\pm}1.33ng/ml$; 63.5%) or left ovary($1.99{\pm}0.61ng/ml$; 85.0%). Estradiol-$17{\beta}$ levels were not significantly different between pregnant and nonpregnant recipients, but estradiol-$17{\beta}$ levels($82.2{\pm}13.5$ VS. $72.3{\pm}10.1pg/ml$) were higher at below 1.0ng/ml of progesterone, and pregnancy rates(33.3 VS. 80%) tended to be lower than above 1.0ng/ml of progesterone. Total cholesterol levels on the day of last $PGF_{2{\alpha}}$ injection and day of transfer did not affect pregnancy rate. Calcium and inorganic phoshorus levels belonged to normal range in most of the recipients. These range did not affect pregnancy rate. In reviewing above results, plasma progesterone levels(1.0~4.0ng/ml) at the time of transfer are diagnostic value for screening recipients prior to transfer of frozen/thawed bovine embryos.

• Archives of Craniofacial Surgery
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.288-293
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• 2020

Background: Pilomatrixoma is a benign tumor that originates from the hair follicle matrix. It usually presents as a hard, slow growing, solitary mass that can be easily misdiagnosed as other skin masses. The aim of this study was to clinically analyze a case series of pilomatrixoma in pediatric patients from Korea. Methods: A total of 165 pediatric patients from 2011 to 2018 with a histological diagnosis of pilomatrixoma were included. A retrospective review was performed using the electronic medical records, including patient demographics, number and location of the mass, clinical and imaging presentation, and postoperative outcomes. Results: There were 61 male and 104 female patients with 152 solitary and 13 multiple pilomatrixomas. Among solitary pilomatrixomas, the lesion commonly occurred in the head and neck (84.2%), followed by upper limbs (11.2%), lower limbs (3.3%), and trunk (1.3%). The pilomatrixoma lesion presented as the following types based on our clinical classification: mass (56.02%), pigmentation (25.31%), mixed (12.65%), ulceration (4.82%), and keloid-like (1.2%). Ultrasonography showed a high positive predictive value (95.56%). There were no specific complications observed except for two cases of recurrence. Conclusion: Pilomatrixoma has various clinical feature presentations and commonly occurs in the head and neck. Ultrasonography is a helpful diagnostic tool. Surgical removal of the lesion is the main treatment method with a low recurrence rate.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.15
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• pp.6283-6286
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• 2014

In patients with microscopic hematuria there is a need for better identification of those who are at greater risk of harbouring bladder tumors. The RisikoCheck(C) questionnaire has a strong correlation with the presence of urothelial carcinoma (UC) of the bladder and in combination with other available tests may help identify patients who require detailed clinical investigations due to increased risk of presence of bladder tumors. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of RisikoCheck(C) questionnaire together with NMP-22(R) (BladderChek(R)) as a point-of-care urine test in predicting the presence of bladder tumors in patients presenting with microscopic hematuria as the sole finding. In this multi-institutional prospective evaluation of 303 consecutive patients without a history of urothelial carcinoma (UC), RisikoCheck(C) risk group assessment, urinary tract imaging and cystourethroscopy as well as urine cytology and Nuclear Matrix Protein-22 (NMP-22 BladderChek) testing were performed where available. The sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value (NPV), and positive predictive values (PPV) for the risk adapted approach were calculated. All patients underwent cystoscopy, and tumors were detected in 18 (5.9%). Urine cytology and NMP-22 was positive for malignancy in 9 (3.2%) and 12 (7.5%) of patients, respectively. A total of 43 (14%) patients were in the high risk group according to the RisikoCheck(C) questionnaire. The sensitivity and specificity of the questionnaire in detecting a bladder tumor was 61.5 % and 84.0 % in the high risk group. In patients with either a positive NMP-22 test or high risk category RisikoCheck(C), 23.6% had bladder tumors with a corresponding sensitivity of 54.2% and specificity of 88.6%. If both tests were negative only 3.3% of the patients had bladder tumors. The results of our study suggest that the efficacy of diagnostic evaluation of patients with microscopic hematuria may be further enhanced by combining RisikoCheck(C) questionnaire with NMP-22.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.3779-3784
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• 2014

Aims: To study alterations of plasma lipid profiles in carcinoma cervix and to assess significance comparedwith controls in different histological grades and stages. Materials and Methods: Totals of 99 histopathologically diagnosed cases and 35 controls from a tertiary hospital situated in the southern part of India which caters the rural and semi-urban populations were considered for the study. Fasting blood samples were taken to analyze total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and low density lipoproteins cholesterol (LDL-C), for comparison of cases, grouped according to histological grades and stages, and controls. One way ANOVA was used for multiple group comparisons and the Student's t test (unpaired) for group wise comparisons. For all tests a 'p' value of 0.05 or less was considered as significant. Results: Out of 99 cases, most (n-39) were seen in the 40-49 year age group followed by 60-69 years (n-22). Serum TG significantly differed between cases and controls but without any relation to differentiation grade. The lipid profile parameters in various grades of cervical cancer were not statistically significant. Statistically significant increase of TC and LDL-C values was observed with increase in stage of the disease. Conclusions: The study showed TG is elevated in cervical cancer, and that TC and LDL-C are proportional to the spread of cancer as it increases from stage I to stage IV. An in-depth study of molecular changes in lipid metabolism in cervical cancer patients, enzymes/genes responsible and alterations in LDL receptors is necessary to provide information to decide whether the lipid profile has any diagnostic/prognostic role in cervical cancer.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.107-114
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• 1997

Recent reports indicate that the clinical usefulness of prostate specific antigen (PSA), particulary in the differentiation of benign prostate hyperplasia from prostate cancer, can be improved by measuring the amount of free PSA in serum. Measuring free PSA is especially useful in attempts to improve diagnositc performance of PSA in the diagnostic gray zone of total PSA. The objective of this study was to develop free PSA assay kit using sandwich microplate enzyme immunoassay format. We chose a test format with polyclonal anti-PSA antibodies coated on the wells and monoclonal anti-free PSA antibodies for quantification to gain higher test sensitivity. We adpoted 10 uL of specimen and 2 hours of first incubation time with detecting antibody for free PSA EIA format using microplate. The within-day and between-day precision (%CV) in the high and low concentration ranges were below 4%. The correlation coefficient between in-house free PSA assay and commercial assay kit was r=0.9965 (slope=0.0984, y intercept=0.0173, N=27). No hook effect was found by 40 ng/mL and correlation coefficient (r) value of the fitted linear regression was over 0.995. The recovery tests were in the range of 98.9∼104.1％ for free PSA. In conclusion, in-house free PSA enzyme immune assay is cost effective, simple and rapid and could be useful for the prognosis after theraphy as well as for the differential diagnosis between prostate cancer and benign prostate hyperplasia.