• ETRI Journal
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.526-537
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• 2024

Monitoring fetal growth in utero is crucial to anomaly diagnosis. However, current computer-vision models struggle to accurately assess the key metrics (i.e., head circumference and occipitofrontal and biparietal diameters) from ultrasound images, largely owing to a lack of training data. Mitigation usually entails image augmentation (e.g., flipping, rotating, scaling, and translating). Nevertheless, the accuracy of our task remains insufficient. Hence, we offer a U-Net fetal head measurement tool that leverages a hybrid Dice and binary cross-entropy loss to compute the similarity between actual and predicted segmented regions. Ellipse-fitted two-dimensional ultrasound images acquired from the HC18 dataset are input, and their lower feature layers are reused for efficiency. During regression, a novel region of interest pooling layer extracts elliptical feature maps, and during segmentation, feature pyramids fuse field-layer data with a new scale attention method to reduce noise. Performance is measured by Dice similarity, mean pixel accuracy, and mean intersection-over-union, giving 97.90%, 99.18%, and 97.81% scores, respectively, which match or outperform the best U-Net models.

• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.29-33
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• 2017

Verrucous carcinoma was first described by Ackerman who reported a case of verrucous carcinoma of the oral cavity. While it is primarily occurred in oral cavity, larynx is the second most affected site, accounting for nearly 35% of cases. It is a rare variant of well-differentiated squamous cell carcinoma and comprises 1% to 4% of all laryngeal carcinomas. It is characterized by locally invasive, slow growth and the surface shows papillary fronds with prominent hyperkeratosis. Because of the benign appearance and difficulty of the tissue diagnosis, it is often undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. The primary treatment modality is surgery and the extent of surgical resection may be guided by T stage. We experienced a case of verrucous carcinoma of larynx in a patient with hoarseness lasted for about 2 years and had difficult to diagnosis and treatment. Therefore we report this case with a brief review of literature.

• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.15-19
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• 2020

Basal cell adenocarcinoma is 1 ~ 2 % of salivary gland carcinoma. It was recently classified as low grade malignancy. It is low grade malignant counterpart of basal cell adenoma. It has similar morphologic attributes with basal cell adenoma, but it has distinctive malignant potential including infiltrative growth into surrounding tissues and distant metastasis. Recently, we have experienced a case of basal cell adenocarcinoma arising from the bilateral parotid gland in a 38-year old woman who was previously operated on superficial parotidectomy due to pleomorphic adenoma. We report this rare case with a review of literature.

• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.27-30
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• 2012

Basaloid squamous cell carcinoma(BSCC) is a high-grade variant of squamous cell carcinoma, with a prediction for multifocal involvement of the base of tongue, pyriform sinus, supraglottic larynx, hypopharynx and palatine tonsil. It primary affects men in the seventh decade of life with frequent cervical lymph-node metastasis at presentation. Grossly, these tumors are usually firm to hard, with associated central necrosis, occuring as exophytic to nodular masses. Histologically, the this infiltrating tumor offers a variety of growth patterns, including solid, lobular, cribriform, cords, trabeculae, nests and glands or cyst. We present a 55-year-old female who was treated with surgical excision and radiotherapy. She was firstly presented as a recurrent inflammatory neck mass and finally diagnosed with basaloid squamous cell carcinoma in the palatine tonsil.

• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.3-8
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• 2000

Background and Objectives: Adenoid cystic carcinoma of salivary glands is characterized by insidious growth over many years, local recurrences, and distant metastasis and classified to three distinct histologic subtypes: tubular, cribriform, and solid. The solid type is known to have the worst prognosis. However, histopathologic heterogeneity is observed in tumors from the same patient. We have attempted to elucidate the genotypic differences, characterized by polysomies of chromosome 17, in adenoid cystic carcinoma according to the phenotypic histopathologic heterogeneity. Materials and Methods: Fluorescence in situ hybridization was performed on formalin-fixed paraffin blocks from seven patients with head and neck adenoid cystic carcinoma, using the centromeric $\alpha$-satellite probe of chromosome 17 to detect nuclei exhibiting polysomy. The difference in polysomeric chromosome expression in cribriform, tubular, solid type and type I, II, III according to the Szanto classification was analyzed. Results: Polysomy of chromosome 17 was found in 15.28% of the cribriform type, in 15.68% of the tubular type, and in 18.87% of the solid type. The proportion of polysomy was statistically higher in the solid type than in the cribriform type(p<0.05), and the proportion of polysomy increased progressively from type 1 to type 3, but this trend was statistically insignificant(p>0.05). Conclusion: We suggest that there may be genetic variations in tumor from the same patient depending on the histopathologic heterogenetiy in adenoid cystic carcinomas.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.287-290
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• 2006

Eye growth and lens diameter of brown croaker Miichthys miiuy were positively allometric between hatching and 180 days post-hatch (d.p.h.). Eye growth in relation to head length and head height was nearly isometric. Eyes were formed completely at 14 d.p.h. At this age, the eye has a crystalline lens, an optic nerve fiber layer, a ganglion cell layer, an inner plexiform layer, an inner nuclear layer, an outer plexiform layer, an outer nuclear layer, an outer limiting membrane, and a pigment epithelium. The essential demands that must be met by the retina in this species pertain to light sensitivity and spatial resolution.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.555-560
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• 2008

Amino acid transporters are essential for the growth and proliferation in all living cells. Among the amino acid transporters, the system L amino acid transporters are the major nutrient transport system responsible for the $Na^+$-independent transport of neutral amino acids including several essential amino acids. The L-type amino acid transporter 1 (LAT1), an isoform of system L amino acid transporter, is highly expressed in cancer cells to support their continuous growth and proliferation. 2-Aminobicyclo-(2,2,1)-heptane-2-carboxylic acid (BCH) is a model compound for the study of amino acid transporter as a system L selective inhibitor. We have examined the effect and mechanism of BCH on cell growth suppression in HEp2 human head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. The BCH inhibited the L-leucine transport in a concentration-dependent manner with a $IC_{50}$ value of $51.2{\pm}3.8{\mu}M$ in HEp2 cells. The growth of HEp2 cells was inhibited by BCH in the timeand concentration-dependent manners. The formation of DNA ladder was not observed with BCH treatment in the cells. Furthermore, the proteolytic processing of caspase-3 and caspase-7 in the cells were not detected by BCH treatment. These results suggest that the BCH inhibits the growth of HEp2 human head and neck squamous cell carcinoma through the intracellular depletion of neutral amino acids for cell growth without apoptotic processing.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.101-106
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• 2016

The epidermal growth factor receptor(EGFR) protein kinase signaling is an important pathway in cancer development and recently reported that EGFR and its kinase domain molecules are mutated in various of cancers including head and neck cancer. Functional deregulation of EGFR due to mutations in coding exons and copy number amplification is the most common event in cancers, especially among receptor tyrosine kinases(TK). We have analyzed Korean oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC) cell lines for mutations in EGFRTK. Exons encoding the hot-spot regions in the TK domain of EGFR (exons 17 to 23) were amplified by using polymerase chain reaction(PCR) and sequenced directly. EGFR expression was also analyzed in 8 OSCC cell lines using western blotting. Data analysis of the EGFR exons 17 to 23 coding sequences did not show any mutations in the 8 OSCC cell lines that were analyzed. The absence of mutations indicate that protein overexpression might be responsible for activation rather than mutation.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.59 no.2
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• pp.149-153
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• 2016

Objective : The aim of the present study is to estimate the incidence trend of head injury and the mortality based on traffic accident statistics and to investigate the impacts of rapid industrialization and economic growth on epidemiology of head injury in Korea over the period 1970-2012 including both pre-industrialized and post-industrialized stages. Methods : We collected data of head injury estimated from traffic accident statistics and seven hospital based reports to see incidence trends between 1970 and 2012. We also investigated the population structure and Gross National Income (GNI) per capita of Korea over the same period. The age specific data were investigated from 1992 to 2012. Results : The incidence of head injury gradually rose in the 1970s and the 1980s but stabilized until the 1990s with transient rise and then started to decline slowly in the 2000s. The mortality grew until 1991 but gradually declined ever since. However, the old age groups showed rather slight increase in both rates. The degree of decrease in the mortality has been more rapid than the incidence on head injury. Conclusion : In Korea during the low income stage, rapid industrialization cause considerable increase in the mortality and the incidence of head injury. During the high income stage, the incidence of head injury gradually declined and the mortality dropped more rapidly than the incidence due to preventive measures and satisfactory medical care. Nevertheless, the old age groups revealed rather slight increase in both rates owing to the large population structure and the declining birth rate.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.2433-2437
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• 2013

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a potent regulator of angiogenesis and thereby involved in the development and progression of solid tumours. Associations between three VEGF gene polymorphisms (-634 G/C, +936 C/T, and +1612 G/A) and breast cancer risk have been extensively studied, but the currently available results are inconclusive. Our aim was to investigate associations between three VEGF gene polymorphisms and breast cancer risk in Chinese Han patients. We performed a hospital-based case-control study including 680 female incident breast cancer patients and 680 female age-matched healthy control subjects. Polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) analysis was performed to detect the three VEGF gene polymorphisms. We observed that women carriers of +936 TT genotypes [odds ratio (OR) =0.46, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.28, 0.76; P=0.002] or 936 T-allele (OR=0.81, 95% CI= 0.68, 0.98; P=0.03) had a protective effect concerning the disease. Our study suggested that the +1612G/A polymorphism was unlikely to be associated with breast cancer risk. The -634CC genotype was significantly associated with high tumor aggressiveness [large tumor size (OR=2.63, 95% CI=1.15, 6.02; P=0.02) and high histologic grade (OR=1.47, 95% CI= 1.06, 2.03; P=0.02)]. The genotypes were not related with other tumor characteristics such as regional or distant metastasis, stage at diagnosis, or estrogen or progesterone receptor status. Our study revealed that the VEGF -634 G/C and +936 C/T gene polymorphisms may be associated with breast cancer in Chinese Han patients.