• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.231-239
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• 2001

This paper proposes a region segmenting method for the Pap-smear image. The proposed method uses a pixel classifier based on neural network, which consists of four stages : preprocessing, feature extraction, region segmentation and postprocessing. In the preprocessing stage, brightness value is normalized by histogram stretching. In the feature extraction stage, total 36 features are extracted from $3{\times}3$ or $5{\times}5$ window. In the region segmentation stage, each pixel which is associated with 36 features, is classified into 3 groups : nucleus, cytoplasm and background. The backpropagation network is used for classification. In the postprocessing stage, the pixel, which have been rejected by the above classifier, are re-classified by the relaxation algorithm. It has been shown experimentally that the proposed method finds the nucleus region accurately and it can find the cytoplasm region too.

• Journal of Korea Association of Health Promotion
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.27-37
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• 2004

Background 'For many years, the Papanicolaou smear has been used to detect pre-malignant and malignant disease of the cervix. Although cervical cytology screening programmes have result in the reduction of cervical cancer incidence and mortality, Pap smear have been subjected to intense scrutiny and criticism in recent years. So cervicography is introduced. Cervicography is an adjunct method of cervical cancer screening intended to complement Papanicolaou smear. Cervicography involve obtaining and evaluating a photographic image of the cervix. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the efficacy of Papanicolaou smear and cervicography in cervical cancer screening. Materials & Methods : This study population was of 74 women, who visited department of obstetrics & Gynecology, Korea association of Health Promotion Chung-nam branch from January, 20O2 to October, 2003. All patients were taken Pap smear before cervicography, and then two cervicography was obtained with applying5% acetic acid. Those women in whom abnormalities were detected by either test subsequently obtained histologic specimen. Results : 1. The sensitivity and the specificity of Papanicolaou smear was 92.1% and 72.7%respectively.2. The sensitivity and the specificity of cervicography was 88.9% and 54.5% respectively. The false negative rate, and false positive rate of Papanicolaou smear were 7.9%, 27.2% respectively. The false negative rate, and false positive rate of cervicography were 11.1%,45.5% respectively. Conclusions . Papanicolaou smear is a useful method and an important tool for detecting cervical cancer. However when Papanicolaou smear and Cervicograpy is used together, the sensitivity is higher than for Papanicolaou smear used alone.

• The Korean Journal of Cytopathology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 1994

Cancer of the cervix is the most common malignancy in women in developing countries and the second most common cancer in women throughout the world with approximately 500,000 new cases each year. Prevention of this large number of premature deaths among women is, therefore, a goal worthy of urgent and serious consideration. Due to its high diagnostic disagreement among pathologists and large quantity of specimens, it is necessary to develop an automatic screening system measuring morphologic and densitometric features of the samples. Many research works have been published but most of them used Feulgen stained specimens which are not a usual staining method used in clinics. In this thesis, an automatic cancerous nucleus detection method essential to a screening system with papanicolaou stained specimens called Pap-smear is proposed which employs image processing techniques. It uses edge information to segment objects and morphologic as well as densitometric information to distinguish cancerous nuclei from dirts or normal nuclei. It has produced useful results in our study.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.11 no.10
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• pp.1992-1998
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• 2007

It is important to obtain conn cytodiagnosis to classify background, cytoplasm, and nucleus from the diagnostic image. This study mose an algorithm that detects and classifies carcinoma cells of the uterine cervix in Pap smear using features of cervical cancer. It applies Median filter and Gaussian filter to get noise-removed nucleus area and also applies Kapur method in binarization of the resultant image. We apply 8-directional contour tracking algorithm and stretching technique to identify and revise clustered cells that often hinder to obtain correct analysis. The resulted nucleus area has distinguishable features such as cell size, integration rate, and directional coefficient from normal cells so that we can detect and classify carcinoma cells successfully. The experiment results show that the performance of the algorithm is competitive with human expert.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2000.04b
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• pp.511-513
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• 2000

PaP Smear 테스트는 자궁 경부암 진단에 가장 효율적인 방법으로 알려져 있다. 그러나 이 방법은 높은 위 음성률(false negative error, 15~50%)을 나타내고 있다. 이런 큰 오류율은 주로 다량의 세포 검사에 기인하여, 자동화 시스템의 개발이 절실히 요구되고 있다. 본 논문은 자궁 경부암의 특징인 군집을 이루는 암세포를 인식할 수 있는 시스템을 제안한다. 시스템은 두 부분으로 나누어진다. 첫 단계에서는 저 배율(100배)에서 간단한 영상처리와 최소 근접 트리(Minimum Spanning Tree)를 통해 군집을 이루는 세포를 찾는다. 두 번째 단계서는 고 배율(400배)로 확대하여 군집 세포들로부터 여러 가지 특징을 추출한 후 KNN(k-Neighbor) 방법을 통해 인식하는 단계이다. 50개의 영상 (640X 480, RGB True Color 25 개의 100배 영상 , 25개의 400배 영상)이 실험에 사용되었다. 한 영상을 처리하는데 약 3초 (2.984초) 소요되었으며, 이는 region growing(20초)나 split and merge(58초) 방법 보다 덜 소요되었다. 100배 영상에서 정상과 비정상의 두 그룹으로 나누었을 경우에는 96%의 높은 인식율을 나타내었으나 비정상을 다시 5개의 그룹으로 나누었을 때는 45%로 나타내었다. 이는 영역 추출(segmentation) 단계에서 오류와 트레이닝 데이터의 비정확성에 기인한다. 400배 영상에서는 각각 92%와 30%로 나타내었다. 이는 영역추출 단계에서 사용한 Watershed 방법의 오류로 기인한 것으로 본다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 1999.10b
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• pp.533-535
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• 1999

자궁경부진 세포인식 시스템에 있어서 가장 중요한 것이 영상처리를 이용하여 세포핵과 세포질을 추출하여 세포의 형태적인 정보를 알아내는 과정이다. 기존의 전역 thresholding 기법이나 region growing의 경우는 pap smear 검사를 통해 얻어진 세포 영상을 분할할 수 있는 region growing 기법을 제안한다. 제안된 region growing 기법은 초기에 seed를 검출할 때 local threshold growing 기법을 제안한다. 제안된 region growing 기법은 초기에 seed를 검출할 때 local threshold 개념을 도입하여 seed의 검출을 고르게 하고, 2가지 확장 조건을 사용하여 영역을 확장한다. 첫 번째 확장 조건은 비정상 세포나 artifact가 많아서 어둡게 나타나는 영상이나 세포질과 배경의 경계가 뚜렷하지 않아서 세포질의 구별이 어려운 영상의 영역 분할이 가능하도록 그 특성을 반영하고, 두 번째 조건은 세포가 흡수하는 빛의 양이 일정하다는 가정으로 영상에서의 지역 특성(gray level, color 등을 반영한다. 제안된 기법은 정상세포 영상뿐만 아니라 비정상 세포 영상에 대하여 over-segment나 under-segment하는 경우를 줄여서 영역 분할에 좋은 결과를 보인다.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.16-20
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• 2001

Purpose : To evaluate the effectiveness and tolerance of the postoperative radiation therapy for patients with Stage III thymoma and to define the optimal radiotherapeutic regimen Materials and Methods : We retrospectively analyzed the records of 24 patients with Stage III thymoma who were referred for postoperative radiation therapy in our institution from June, 1987 to May, 1999. Surgical therapy consisted of total resection in one patient, subtotal resection in seventeen, and biopsy alone in six patients. Age of the patients was ranged from 20 to 62 years with mean age of 47 years. Male to female ratio was 14 to 10. Radiation therapy was delivered with linear accelerator producing either 6 MeV or 10 MeV photons. The irradiated volume included anterior mediastinum and known residual disease. The supraclavicular fossae were not irradiated. The delivered total dose was ranged from 30 to 56 Gy. One patient received 30 Gy and eighteen patients received minimum of 50 Gy. Follow up period was ranged from 12 months to 8 years with median follow up of 40 months. Results : The overall local control rate for entire group of patients was $67\%$ at 5 years. The cumulative local failure rates at one, three and five year were $18\%,\;28\%\;and\;33\%$, respectively. In patients treated with subtotal resection and biopsy alone, local control rate was $76\%\;and\;33\%$, respectively. The actuarial observed survival rate at 5 years was $57\%$, and actuarial adjusted survival at 5 years was $72\%$. The difference between 5 year survival rates for patients treated with subtotal resection and biopsy alone was not statistically significant $(62\%\;vs\;30\%)$. Conclusion : We might conclude that postoperative radiation therapy was safe and effective treatment for patients with Stage III thymoma. Postoperative radiation therapy is recommended in cases where tumor margin is close or incomplete resection is accomplished.