• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.173-176
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• 2012

We report the radiological findings of regional enhancement of the liver adjacent to the right adrenal pheochromocytoma. CT and MRI showed focal strong enhancement of adjacent liver tissue in the arterial phase. However during the delayed phase, the lesion showed iso-attenuation with normal hepatic parenchyma and not delineated. The lesion did not show abnormal signal intensity on neither T1 nor T2 weighted images and indistinguishable from normal parenchyma. The enhancing hepatic lesion was spontaneously regressed on postoperative follow up CT which was taken several months after the adrenalectomy.

• Preventive Nutrition and Food Science
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.80-86
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• 1996

Parathyroid hormone(PTH) is known to stimulate bone resorption and to inhibit bone collagen synthesis. In contrast, as the evidence of stimulation of bone formation by PTH has recently been observed, the study on the role of PTH involved in osteoporosis draws remarkable attention. This study has dealt with the role of alkaline phoshatase(AP), a marker enzyme for bone formation and osteoblast action, Animals(BALS/cmice) were divided into three dietary groups(high and medium Ca and Ca-free) and hormones including PTH, calcitonin(CT), cholecalciferol(citamin D) were i.p. injected. AP in the serum and liver was measured using Sigma 221 alkaline buffer solutions containing 9mM of p-nitrophenyl phoshate. Enzume was reacted at 37$^{\circ}C$ for 10 minutes and the reaction was stopped by 1.8ml of 0.1N NaOH and measured at 410nm. We found that serum and liver AP activity was increased by low dietary Ac. Compared to the control, and serum Ap activity was enhanced by PTH and vitamin D regardless of the dietary Ca. On the other hand, liver AP activity was inhibited by OTH and vitamin D at all levels of dietary Ca. CT inhibited the action of PTH and vitamin D in the serum. But, the inhibition of PTH and vitamin D action by CT was not observed in the liver, unlike in the case of serum.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.189-196
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• 2012

Purpose: To investigate the safety of high dose hypofractionated radiotherapy (RT) in patients with small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in terms of liver volumetric changes and clinical liver function. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 16 patients with small HCC who were treated with high dose hypofractionated RT between 2006 and 2009. The serial changes of the liver volumetric parameter were analyzed from pre-RT and follow-up (FU) computed tomography (CT) scans. We estimated linear time trends of whole liver volume using a linear mixed model. The serial changes of the Child-Pugh (CP) scores were also analyzed in relation to the volumetric changes. Results: Mean pre-RT volume of entire liver was 1,192.2 mL (range, 502.6 to 1,310.2 mL) and mean clinical target volume was 14.7 mL (range, 1.56 to 70.07 mL). Fourteen (87.5%) patients had 4 FU CT sets and 2 (12.5%) patients had 3 FU CT sets. Mean interval between FU CT acquisition was 2.5 months. After considering age, gender and the irradiated liver volume as a fixed effects, the mixed model analysis confirmed that the change in liver volume is not significant throughout the time course of FU periods. Majority of patients had a CP score change less than 2 except in 1 patient who had CP score change more than 3. Conclusion: The high dose hypofractionated RT for small HCC is relatively safe and feasible in terms of liver volumetric changes and clinical liver function.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.179-190
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• 2001

In this proposed study, observing and analyzing contrast enhanced abdominal CT images, we segmented the liver automatically. We computed the ratio of each gray value from the estimated gray value range. With the average value of mesh image, we distinguished the liver from the noise parts. We divided the region based on immersion simulation. The threshold value is determined from the mesh image which is generated from each gray value portion of the liver and is used in dividing the liver to the noise region. To get the outline of the liver, we generated template image which represents the lump of the liver, and subtracted it from the binary image. With the results we use the proposed algorithm using 8-connectivity instead of the present opening algorithm, to reduce the processing time. We computed the volume from the segmented organ size and presented a clinical demonstration with the animal experiment

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.1206-1224
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• 2018

Purpose: This systematic review was planned and performed in order to determine the clinical effectiveness of acupuncture for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Methods: We searched related randomized controlled trials in several medical online databases, including China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Excerpta Medica dataBASE (EMBASE), Public/Publisher MEDLINE (PubMed), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), National Digital Science Library (NDSL), and Research Information Sharing Service (RISS). NAFLD related outcomes were extracted from the included trials and meta-analyzed. Results: From the 8 included trials, the values of the following examinations were extracted: liver ultrasonography, liver CT, body fat CT, aspartate transaminase (AST), alanine transaminase (ALT), gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT), total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, fasting blood sugar (FBS), hosmeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), weight, body mass index (BMI), waist hip ratio (WHR), obesity degree, body fat mass, body fat rate, leptin, malondialdehyde (MDA), and super oxide dismutase (SOD). In the 4 outcomes, cure rate in liver ultrasonography (RR=1.56; 95%CI=1.05~2.31; P=0.03), cure rate in liver CT (RR=2.23; 95%CI=1.33~3.72; P=0.002), TC (MD=-0.78; 95%CI=-1.41~-0.15; P=0.02), and TG (MD=-2.05; 95%CI=-3.88~-0.21; P=0.03), acupuncture was more effective than the control intervention. Conclusions: In this meta-analysis, acupuncture relieved hepatic steatosis, and reduced TC, and TG in NAFLD patients. more well-planned studies are still needed due to the heterogeneity and the considerable methodological flaws in the analyzed trials.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.63-68
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• 2010

The ultimate goal of radiation treatment is to use enough radiation dosage in order to examine a tumor while protecting normal tissue. Respiratory guided radiotherapy is being clinically implemented to examine a given stabilized area in order to compensate for the problems of patient breathing. This study investigates the effects of breathing movements on 40 patients with liver cancer through the actual radiation therapy plan using 4D-CT and respiratory guided radiotherapy using RPM. Using a commercial RPM respiratory gating system 4D-CT, we acquired 4D CT on multislice helical CT scanners that use different approaches to 4D CT image reconstruction. The results from analyzing forty patients according to age and direction showed no relationship between gender and transition change. The mean left-right, anteroposterior, and craniocaudal total movements were $3.19{\pm}1.29$, $5.44{\pm}2.07$, and $12.54{\pm}4.70$ mm, respectively. Changes were the largest with CC directions and as patients advanced in age, movements were larger. Therefore, as changes occur in treatment areas because of movements caused from breathing, respiratory gating system is put into operation to revise movement and can increase the radiotherapeutics effects in treating liver cancer.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.380-389
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• 2007

In Korea, undoubtedly, the cancer is one of the most common reasons of death, and hepatoma is the second highest fatal cancer regardless of the gender only next to the stomach cancer In the middle and prime-aged between 40 and 60 years, the incidence of hepatoma is the highest in the world, and the death rate due to hepatoma is the highest among OECD countries. In this paper, we propose a novel method for automatic identification of hepatoma from a contrast enhanced CT images, which is used in an expert system that helps medical specialists. First, consecutive $40{\sim}50$ contrail enhanced CT images are photographed by every 5mm from the upper part of the chest, and using position information on the rib, we classify the internal area including only internal organs and the external one that consists of the rib, subcutaneous fat layers, and the background from the CT images. Then, the region of the liver is extracted from the classified internal area by using information on the intensity, the distribution of brightness, and using the regions extracted from consecutive images, we restore information on the 5 mm space occurred between the consecutive two slides tty applying a shape-based interpolation method. Lastly, using the characteristics such as the brightness and the morphology, we are able to extract the regions of hepatoma. The expert system based on our method is sufficiently competitive when it is compared with the diagnoses by specialists in the diagnostic radiology.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.79-83
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• 2010

Herbal hepatotoxicity is a one of the most often encountered controversial issues in medical society. Some believe herbs are totally safe while others regard treatment with herbs as a very common cause of hepatotoxicity. But there are no comparative clinical hepatotoxicity studies between herbal and conventional medicines. We investigated incidence of patients with abnormal liver function who were treated with herbal or conventional medicine at Dongguk University International Hospital. Each group consisted of 300 patients, who were admitted for longer than 30 days during the year 2008. We compared albumin, total bilirubin, AST (aspartate aminotransferase), and ALT (alanine aminotransferase) levels, and excludes patients who had abnormal liver function test or liver-related disease when admitted. As a result, incidence of total bilirubin, AST, and ALT elevation in the CT (conventional treatment) group was more frequent than in the TKM (traditional Korean medicine) group (p<0.05) during admission. Albumin level also decreased more frequently in the CT group than in the TKM group (p<0.05). According to these results, herbal medicine is not more hepatotoxic than conventional medicine, and not a main cause of liver injury in inpatients.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.49-54
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• 2016

Medical image processing is a compulsory process to diagnose many kinds of disease. Therefore, an automatic algorithm for this task is highly demanded as an important part to construct a computer-aided diagnosis system. In this paper, we introduce an automatic method to segment the liver region from 3D abdominal CT images using Otsu method. First, we choose a 2D slice which has most liver information from the whole 3D image. Secondly, on the chosen slice, we enhanced the image based on its intensity using Otsu method with multiple thresholds and use the threshold to enhance the whole 3D image. Then, we apply a liver mask to mark the candidate liver region. After that, we execute the Otsu method again to segment the liver region from the chosen slice and propagate the result to the whole 3D image. Finally, we apply preprocessing on the frontal side of 3D images to crop only the liver region from the image.

• Journal of Digestive Cancer Research
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.32-36
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• 2014

We report a patient with combined hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinoma confined in the common hepatic duct and scirrhous type of hepatocellular carcinoma in the caudate lobe of liver simultaneously. The patient was a 55-yearsold Korean man with hepatitis B virus (HBV) carrier who was referred from a local hospital due to detected liver mass on abdominal computed tomography (CT). He has presented jaundice and weight loss for the previous 3 weeks. Laboratory examination showed AST/ALT elevation and hyperbilirubinemia. HBsAg was positive. The tumor marker study showed elevated AFP and DCP, not CEA and CA 19-9. Abdominal CT disclosed an about 2.1×0.9 cm sized soft tissue density in hilum with both intrahepatic duct (IHD) dilatations and an about 3×2.1 cm sized arterial enhancing lesion at segment 8 of the liver. Patient received 15 cycles of Gemcitabine/Cisplantin chemotherapy from February 27, 2013 to December 31, 2013. Caudate lobectomy of liver, segmental resection of bile duct and Roux-en-Y hepaticojejunostomy was performed on February 10, 2014. The final pathologic report showed double primary liver cancer, combined hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinoma in common hepatic bile duct and scirrhous type of hepatocellular carcinoma in segment 1 of the liver. This is a very unusual case in which combined hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinoma confined in the large bile duct and two rare hepatic cancers coexisted.