• Journal of Korean Foot and Ankle Society
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.173-182
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• 2019

Purpose: This study determined if anterior talofibular ligament (ATFL)/superior extensor ankle retinaculum (SEAR) thicknesses are related to dynamic balance in individuals with chronic ankle instability (CAI). Materials and Methods: The subjects were 14 males and 15 females (age=24.52±3.46 years). Ankle instability was assessed using the Cumberland Ankle Instability Tool (CAIT) with a cut off score of 25 to define two groups. SonoSite MTurbo (Fugifilm Sonosite, Inc.) musculoskeletal ultrasound (MSKUS) unit was used to assess ATFL and SEAR thicknesses. Dynamic balance was measured with the Y Balance Test (YBT) and two NeuroCom balance tests. Results: There were no significant differences in the average ATFL thickness between stable and unstable ankles in those subjects with CAI (0.25±0.03 cm and 0.21±0.05 cm, respectively) or in the SEAR thickness (0.09±0.04 cm and 0.10±0.03 cm, respectively). There were also no significant differences in the right and left ATFL thicknesses (0.23±0.07 cm and 0.21±0.04 cm, respectively) or the SEAR thicknesses (0.09±0.01 cm and 0.09±0.01 cm, respectively) in those without CAI. There were no differences between limbs in composite scores on YBT in those with CAI (p=0.35) and those without CAI (p=0.33). There was a moderate correlation between the left SEAR thickness and the large forward/backward perturbations on the NeuroCom (Natus) motor control test (r=0.51, p=0.006 and r=0.54, p=0.003, respectively). Conclusion: There were no differences in the ATFL/SEAR thicknesses or balance measures between or within the groups, likely because CAI is multi-factorial and related to mechanisms other than tissue changes alone. More sensitive technology and a better definition of the measurement process may provide more definitive results.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.17-23
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• 1984

For nearly a century it has been known that chemical activity accompanies mental activity, but only recently has it been possible to begin to examine its exact nature. Positron-emitting radioactive tracers have made it possible to study the chemistry of the human mind in health and disease, using chiefly cyclotron-produced radionuclides, carbon-11, fluorine-18 and oxygen-15. It is now well established that measurable increases in regional cerebral blood flow, glucose and oxygen metabolism accompany the mental functions of perception, cognition, emotion and motion. On May 25, 1983 the first imaging of a neuroreceptor in the human brain was accomplished with carbon-11 methyl spiperone, a ligand that binds preferentially to dopamine-2 receptors, 80% of which are located in the caudate nucleus and putamen. Quantitative imaging of serotonin-2, opiate, benzodiazapine and muscarinic cholinergic receptors has subsequently been accomplished. In studies of normal men and women, it has been found that dopamine and serotonin receptor activity decreases dramatically with age, such a decrease being more pronounced in men than in women and greater in the case of dopamine receptors than serotonin-2 receptors. Preliminary studies in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders suggests that dopamine-2 receptor activity is diminished in the caudate nucleus of patients with Huntington's disease. Positron tomography permits quantitative assay of picomolar quantities of neuro-receptors within the living human brain. Studies of patients with Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, acute and chronic pain states and drug addiction are now in progress. The growth of any scientific field is based on a paradigm or set of ideas that the community of scientists accepts. The unifying principle of nuclear medicine is the tracer principle applied to the study of human disease. Nineteen hundred and sixty-three was a landmark year in which technetium-99m and the Anger camera combined to move the field from its latent stage into a second stage characterized by exponential growth within the framework of the paradigm. The third stage, characterized by gradually declining growth, began in 1973. Faced with competing advances, such as computed tomography and ultrasonography, proponents and participants in the field of nuclear medicine began to search for greener pastures or to pursue narrow sub-specialties. Research became characterized by refinements of existing techniques. In 1983 nuclear medicine experienced what could be a profound change. A new paradigm was born when it was demonstrated that, despite their extremely low chemical concentrations, in the picomolar range, it was possible to image and quantify the distribution of receptors in the human body. Thus, nuclear medicine was able to move beyond physiology into biochemistry and pharmacology. Fundamental to the science of pharmacology is the concept that many drugs and endogenous substances, such as neurotransmitters, react with specific macromolecules that mediate their pharmacologic actions. Such receptors are usually identified in the study of excised tissues, cells or cell membranes, or in autoradiographic studies in animals. The first imaging and quantification of a neuroreceptor in a living human being was performed on May 25, 1983 and reported in the September 23, 1983 issue of SCIENCE. The study involved the development and use of carbon-11 N-methyl spiperone (NMSP), a drug with a high affinity for dopamine receptors. Since then, studies of dopamine and serotonin receptors have been carried out in over 100 normal persons or patients with various neuropsychiatric disorders. Exactly one year later, the first imaging of opitate receptors in a living human being was performed [1].

• Advances in biomechanics and applications
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.169-185
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• 2014

Computational multibody models of the elbow can provide a versatile tool to study joint mechanics, cartilage loading, ligament function and the effects of joint trauma and orthopaedic repair. An efficiently developed computational model can assist surgeons and other investigators in the design and evaluation of treatments for elbow injuries, and contribute to improvements in patient care. The purpose of this study was to develop an anatomically correct elbow joint model and validate the model against experimental data. The elbow model was constrained by multiple bundles of non-linear ligaments, three-dimensional deformable contacts between articulating geometries, and applied external loads. The developed anatomical computational models of the joint can then be incorporated into neuro-musculoskeletal models within a multibody framework. In the approach presented here, volume images of two cadaver elbows were generated by computed tomography (CT) and one elbow by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to construct the three-dimensional bone geometries for the model. The ligaments and triceps tendon were represented with non-linear spring-damper elements as a function of stiffness, ligament length and ligament zero-load length. Articular cartilage was represented as uniform thickness solids that allowed prediction of compliant contact forces. As a final step, the subject specific model was validated by comparing predicted kinematics and triceps tendon forces to experimentally obtained data of the identically loaded cadaver elbow. The maximum root mean square (RMS) error between the predicted and measured kinematics during the complete testing cycle was 4.9 mm medial-lateral translational of the radius relative to the humerus (for Specimen 2 in this study) and 5.30 internal-external rotation of the radius relative to the humerus (for Specimen 3 in this study). The maximum RMS error for triceps tendon force was 7.6 N (for Specimen 3).

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.159-167
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• 2007

Vestibular schwannoma (VS) is a benign tumor typically originated in the schwann cell of vestibular nerve and usually accompany hearing symptom. Microsurgical removal and radiosurgery have a great role for the treatment of VS. Recently radiosurgery has been considered as an alternative or primary treatment for VS with the tremendous increase of patients who were treated with gamma knife radiosurgery (GKS) though microsurgery still takes the premier. By many published results, it is proved that GKS is a effective and noninvasive technique for VS, especially small sized tumors with satisfactory tumor control rate. The authors assumed that GKS can be expected to achieve satisfactory tumor control rate for small VS under 5cc in volume. A major interest regarding radiosurgery nowadays is to determine the optimal radiation dose for hearing preservation to improve the quality of life of patients. The more high radiation dose are used for effective tumor growth control, the more radiation-related complications like as hearing deficit, the impairment of other cranial nerve function are increased. Since 1990's the mean radiation dose for tumor margin was more than 18 Gy, but there were high complication rate in spite of good tumor growth control. After the year of 2000, under the influence of advanced neuro-imaging techniques and radiosurgical planning system which enable clinicians to do more precise planning, marginal dose for VS has been decreased to 12-13 Gy and the radiation-related complications has been reduced. But because there may be a unexpected radiation induced complications as time goes by after the latency period, optimal radiation dose for VS should be established on the basis of more long term follow-up observation.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.517-522
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• 2012

Objective : Meningiomas represent 18-20% of all intracranial tumors and have a 20-50% 10-year recurrence rate, despite aggressive surgery and irradiation. Hydroxyurea, an inhibitor of ribonucleotide reductase, is known to inhibit meningioma cells by induction of apoptosis. We report the long-term follow-up result of hydroxyurea therapy in the patients with recurrent meningiomas. Methods : Thirteen patients with recurrent WHO grade I or II meningioma were treated with hydroxyurea (1000 $mg/m^2/day$ orally divided twice per day) from June 1998 to February 2012. Nine female and 4 male, ranging in age from 32 to 83 years (median age 61.7 years), were included. Follow-up assessment included physical examination, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Standard neuro-oncological response criteria (Macdonald criteria) were used to evaluate the follow-up MRI scans. The treatment was continued until there was objective disease progression or onset of unmanageable toxicity. Results : Ten of the 13 patients (76.9%) showed stable disease after treatment, with time to progression ranging from 8 to 128 months (median 72.4 months; 6 patients still accruing time). However, there was no complete response or partial response in any patients. Three patients had progressive disease after 88, 89, 36 months, respectively. There was no severe (Grade III-IV) blood systemic disorders and no episodes of non-hematological side effects. Conclusion : This study showed that hydroxyurea is a modestly active agent against recurrent meningiomas and can induce long-term stabilization of disease in some patients. We think that hydroxyurea treatment is well tolerated and convenient, and could be considered as an alternative treatment option in patients with recurrent meningiomas prior to reoperation or radiotherapy.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.111-122
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• 2014

This study has analyzed the scanning path algorithm shown at the process of exploring spatial information through an observation experiment with the object of lobby in subway station. In the estimation of observation time by section, the frequency of scanning type was found to increase as the observation time got longer, which makes it possible that the longer the observation lasts the more the observation interruptions occur. In addition, the observation slipped out of the range of imaging when any fatigue was caused from the observation or the more active exploration took place. Furthermore, when the trend line was employed for the examination of the changes to the scanning type by time section, "concentration" "diagonal or vertical" showed a sharp and a gentle increases along with the increase of time section respectively, while "circulation. combination, horizontal" showed a reduction. The observation data of the subjects observing a space include various visual information. The analysis of the scanning type found at "attention concentration" enabled to draw this significant conclusion. The features of increase and decrease of scanning types can be a fundamental data for understanding the scanning tendency by time.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.22-32
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• 2020

The hippocampal volume atrophy is known to be linked with neuro-degenerative disorders and it is also one of the most important early biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease detection. The measurements of hippocampal pure volumes from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a crucial task and state-of-the-art methods require a large amount of time. In addition, the structural brain development is investigated using MRI data, where brain morphometry (e.g. cortical thickness, volume, surface area etc.) study is one of the significant parts of the analysis. In this study, we have proposed a patch-based ensemble model of 3-D convolutional neural network (CNN) to measure the hippocampal pure volume from MRI data. The 3-D patches were extracted from the volumetric MRI scans to train the proposed 3-D CNN models. The trained models are used to construct the ensemble 3-D CNN model and the aggregated model predicts the pure volume in one-step in the test phase. Our approach takes only 5 seconds to estimate the volumes from an MRI scan. The average errors for the proposed ensemble 3-D CNN model are 11.7±8.8 (error%±STD) and 12.5±12.8 (error%±STD) for the left and right hippocampi of 65 test MRI scans, respectively. The quantitative study on the predicted volumes over the ground truth volumes shows that the proposed approach can be used as a proxy.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.62-66
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• 2015

Purpose Various database comparison methods(DCM) are used for analyzing functional neuro-imaging. It is possible to statistically evaluate decreased or increased metabolism of abnormal patient's brain by comparing with asymptomatic controls in DCM. And results of DCM are additionally used for easily explaining defect region. The aim of this study was to evaluate usefulness of statistical parametric mapping(SPM) and scenium. Materials and Methods Data of 15 patients($62.02{\pm}15.03year$) underwent $^{18}F-FDG$ brain PET/CT were collected and analyzed. Biograph TruePoint 40 with TrueV, (Siemens) was used as a PET/CT scanner. Scenium(version 4.0) in Syngo.via(version VA30A) and SPM99 were applied for statistical evaluation. Consistency between PET reading and result of DCM were evaluated by 5 nuclear medicine physicians through a questionnaire survey. SUV and SD changes were evaluated by changing iteration, gaussian filter and matrix size in scenium. And average required time for generating result of SPM99 and scenium was compared by 3 medical technologists. Results Consistency from the result of SPM99 and scenium showed 84% and 92.4% compare to PET reading. When iteration 4, FWHM 8 and matrix size 168, SUV and SD were decreased by 0.59%, 8.73%, 4.69%, 20.38% and 0.88%, 8.25% respectively compare to routine parameter(iteration 8, FWHM 2 and matrix size 336) of scenium. Average required time of SPM99 and Scenium took 282 seconds and 116 seconds to generate result. Conclusion Results of SPM99 and Scenium showed high consistency compare to PET reading. Various parameters can be controled by user when using SPM. However, normal database needs to be acquired. And it takes significant amount of time and effort for the first set up. On the other hand, Scenium provides normal database even though modifiable parameters are limited. Therefore, more informations could be provided for brain PET/CT if properly understanding and selecting each DCM.

• Korean Journal of Digital Imaging in Medicine
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2013

Purpose : The Carotid Angio inspection including Aortic arch applied to wide area is conducted as the Contrast Enhance MR Angiography(CEA) which is using a contrast medium. However it is a burden not only for someone such as infants, pregnant women and patients suffering from kidney failure but continuous use of contrast medium also can be a burden for patients who has been taken follow up inspection since diagnose lesion already. The purpose of this study is to estimate a usefulness of the Time of Flight (TOF) by comparing with CEA. Materials and methods : 10 patients with an average age of 58 (from 45 to 75) who had MRA inspection in our hospital were studied using 3.0 Tesla Aachieva (Philips, Netherland) MRI system and Sense Neuro-Vascular 16 Channels Coil. The same patient was inspected both TOF and CEA simultaneously. The TOF inspection included from Aortic arch to Willis Circle by connecting 3 TOF stacks and so did CEA inspection. The quantitative analysis was conducted through signal to noise ratio(SNR) and contrast to noise ratio(CNR) with soft tissue by setting up an area of interest on CCA bifurcatoin, ICA, ECA, MCA and VA concerning obtained image. In case of qualitative analysis, 3 radiological technologists and 1 radiologist evaluated 4 items (1: Visibility of the blood vessel, 2: Image distortion measure, 3: Overlapping measure with vein, 4: Peripheral blood vessel description measure) into five points scale (1: Very bad, 2: Bad, 3: Normal 4: Good, 5: Very good). Results : Results for the quantitative analysis was obtained by calculating the average of 5 ROIs in case of SNR and CNR separately. Results of SNR, TOF were generally measured higher than CEA (In case of TOF were 166.1, 205.2, 154.39, 172.23, 161.95, and CEA were 92.05, 95.43, 84.76, 73.69, 88.3). But according to the result of CNR, both TOF and CEA were measured similarly as 67.62, 106.71, 55.9, 73.74, 63.46 for TOF and 67.82, 71.19, 60.52, 49.45, 64.07 for CEA. Throughout every results of each ROI, SNR showed statistically meaningful consequence (0.050.05). In case of qualitative analysis the average of each evaluated item was 4.2points and 4.28points in the item1, 2.93points and 4.55points in the item2, 4.6points and 3.13points in the item3, 2.88points and 4.6points in the item4. According to the results TOF was measured higher in the item3 while in the item2 and item4 CEA was higher and in case of the item1, both CEA and TOF were similar. To sum up statistically meaningful results (p<0.05) were shown in the item2, item3 and item4 but not in the item1 (p>0.05). Conclusions : Both TOF and CEA are complementary because each inspection has pros and cons, but when inspect wide area including Aortic arch normally CEA is conducted. But TOF inspection also can be considered as alternative in terms of patients who has difficulty in the contrast medium such as infants, pregnant women and patients suffering from kidney failure and patients during follow up.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.183-194
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• 2009

Purpose : This study was performed not only to compare the brain activation regions associated with sexual arousal induced by visual stimulation and SP6 acupuncture, but also to evaluate its differential neuro-anatomical mechanism in healthy women using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 3 Tesla (T). Subjects and methods : A total of 21 healthy right-handed female volunteers (mean age 22 years, range 19 to 32) underwent fMRI on a 3T MR scanner. The stimulation paradigm for sexual arousal consisted of two alternating periods of rest and activation. It began with a 1-minute rest period, 3 minutes of stimulation with either of an erotic video film or SP6 acupuncture, followed by 1-minute rest. In addition, a comparative study on the brain activation patterns between an acupoint and a shampoint nearby GB37 was performed. The fMRI data were obtained from 20 slices parallel to the AC-PC line on an axial plane, giving a total of 2,000 images. The mean activation maps were constructed and analyzed by using the statistical parametric mapping (SPM99) software. Results : As comparison with the shampoint, the acupoint showed 5 times and 2 times higher activities in the neocortex and limbic system, respectively. Note that brain activation in response to stimulation with the shampoint was not observed in the regions including the HTHL in the diencephalon, GLO and AMYG in the basal ganglia, and SMG in the parietal lobe. In the comparative study of visual stimulation vs. SP6 acupuncture, the mean activation ratio of stimulus was not significantly different to each other in both the neocortex and the limbic system (p < 0.05). The mean activities induced by both stimuli were not significantly different in the neocortex, whereas the acupunctural stimulation showed higher activity in the limbic system (p < 0.05). Conclusions : This study compared the differential brain activation patterns and the neural mechanisms for sexual arousal, which were induced by visual stimulation and SP6 acupuncture by using 3T fMRI. These findings will be useful to understand the theory of traditional acupuncture and acupoint channel in scientific point of view.