• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.636-645
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• 2022

Background: Ginsenoside Rg3 and gemcitabine have mutual enhancing antitumor effects. However, the underlying mechanisms are not clear. This study explored the influence of ginsenoside Rg3 on Zinc finger protein 91 homolog (ZFP91) expression in pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD) and their regulatory mechanisms on gemcitabine sensitivity. Methods: RNA-seq and survival data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)-PAAD and Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) were used for in-silicon analysis. PANC-1, BxPC-3, and PANC-1 gemcitabine-resistant (PANC-1/GR) cells were used for in vitro analysis. PANC-1 derived tumor xenograft nude mice model was used to assess the influence of ginsenoside Rg3 and ZFP91 on tumor growth in vivo. Results: Ginsenoside Rg3 reduced ZFP91 expression in PAAD cells in a dose-dependent manner. ZFP91 upregulation was associated with significantly shorter survival of patients with PAAD. ZFP91 overexpression induced gemcitabine resistance, which was partly conquered by ginsenoside Rg3 treatment. ZFP91 depletion sensitized PANC-1/GR cells to gemcitabine treatment. ZFP91 interacted with Testis-Specific Y-Encoded-Like Protein 2 (TSPYL2), induced its poly-ubiquitination, and promoted proteasomal degradation. Ginsenoside Rg3 treatment weakened ZFP91-induced TSPYL2 poly-ubiquitination and degradation. Enforced TSPYL2 expression increased gemcitabine sensitivity of PAAD cells and partly reversed induced gemcitabine resistance in PANC-1/GR cells. Conclusion: Ginsenoside Rg3 can increase gemcitabine sensitivity of pancreatic adenocarcinoma at least via reducing ZFP91 mediated TSPYL2 destabilization.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.1034-1043
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• 2021

Objective: The purpose of this meta-analysis was to investigate the pooled agreements of the coronary artery calcium (CAC) severities assessed by electrocardiogram (ECG)-gated and non-ECG-gated CT and evaluate the impact of the scan parameters. Materials and Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane library were systematically searched. A modified Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 tool was used to evaluate the quality of the studies. Meta-analytic methods were utilized to determine the pooled weighted bias, limits of agreement (LOA), and the correlation coefficient of the CAC scores or the weighted kappa for the categorization of the CAC severities detected by the two modalities. The heterogeneity among the studies was also assessed. Subgroup analyses were performed based on factors that could affect the measurement of the CAC score and severity: slice thickness, reconstruction kernel, and radiation dose for non-ECG-gated CT. Results: A total of 4000 patients from 16 studies were included. The pooled bias was 62.60, 95% LOA were -36.19 to 161.40, and the pooled correlation coefficient was 0.94 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.89-0.97) for the CAC score. The pooled weighted kappa of the CAC severity was 0.85 (95% CI = 0.79-0.91). Heterogeneity was observed in the studies (I² > 50%, p < 0.1). In the subgroup analysis, the agreement between the CAC categorizations was better when the two CT examinations had reconstructions based on the same slice thickness and kernel. Conclusion: The pooled agreement of the CAC severities assessed by the ECG-gated and non-ECG-gated CT was excellent; however, it was significantly affected by scan parameters, such as slice thickness and the reconstruction kernel.

• Hip & pelvis
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.26-36
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• 2024

Total hip arthroplasty (THA) is a frequently performed procedure; the objective is restoration of native hip biomechanics and achieving functional range of motion (ROM) through precise positioning of the prosthetic components. Advanced three-dimensional (3D) imaging and computed tomography (CT)-based navigation are valuable tools in both the preoperative planning and intraoperative execution. The aim of this study is to provide a thorough overview on the applications of CT scans in both the preoperative and intraoperative settings of primary THA. Preoperative planning using CT-based 3D imaging enables greater accuracy in prediction of implant sizes, leading to enhancement of surgical workflow with optimization of implant inventory. Surgeons can perform a more thorough assessment of posterior and anterior acetabular wall coverage, acetabular osteophytes, anatomical landmarks, and thus achieve more functional implant positioning. Intraoperative CT-based navigation can facilitate precise execution of the preoperative plan, to attain optimal positioning of the prosthetic components to avoid impingement. Medial reaming can be minimized preserving native bone stock, which can enable restoration of femoral, acetabular, and combined offsets. In addition, it is associated with greater accuracy in leg length adjustment, a critical factor in patients' postoperative satisfaction. Despite the higher costs and radiation exposure, which currently limits its widespread adoption, it offers many benefits, and the increasing interest in robotic surgery has facilitated its integration into routine practice. Conducting additional research on ultra-low-dose CT scans and examining the potential for translation of 3D imaging into improved clinical outcomes will be necessary to warrant its expanded application.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.607-612
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• 2009

The malignant tumor in childhood is one of the main causes of children s death due to disease. The traditional treatment for the malignancy is known for the radiation therapy and the chemical therapy or both. However, the treatments tend to induce intraoral complications. Different from adults, almost all children on cancer therapy are expected to have dental complications, because their permanent teeth are on the developmental stage. The degree of dental complication depends on the patient's age, type of chemical and other factors-radiation dose and frequency. In this report, 3 children who had experienced the anti-cancer therapy on their age between 1 and 4 years were selected and dental complications were examined. The children have chance for the various oral complications including the developmental problems such as agenesis, microdontia and hypoplasia of the teeth. Therefore, it's important to understand the side-effects of anticancer therapy during the permanent teeth had been developmental stage in young patients. Also, oral health care specialists, including pediatric and hospital dentist can support the oncology team by providing basic oral care, implementing oral care protocols, delivering emergency dental treatment undergoing anticancer treatment.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.326-334
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• 2024

Extra-oral imaging techniques such as Panoramic X-rays (PXs) and Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) are the most preferred imaging modalities in dental clinics owing to its patient convenience during imaging as well as their ability to visualize entire teeth information. PXs are preferred for routine clinical treatments and CBCTs for complex surgeries and implant treatments. However, PXs are limited by the lack of third dimensional spatial information whereas CBCTs inflict high radiation exposure to patient. When a PX is already available, it is beneficial to reconstruct the 3D oral structure from the PX to avoid further expenses and radiation dose. In this paper, we propose 3DentAI - an U-Net based deep learning framework for 3D reconstruction of oral structure from a PX image. Our framework consists of three module - a reconstruction module based on attention U-Net for estimating depth from a PX image, a realignment module for aligning the predicted flattened volume to the shape of jaw using a predefined focal trough and ray data, and lastly a refinement module based on 3D U-Net for interpolating the missing information to obtain a smooth representation of oral cavity. Synthetic PXs obtained from CBCT by ray tracing and rendering were used to train the networks without the need of paired PX and CBCT datasets. Our method, trained and tested on a diverse datasets of 600 patients, achieved superior performance to GAN-based models even with low computational complexity.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.372-378
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• 2014

Noise in biomedical X-ray image degrades the quality so that it might causes to decrease the accuracy of diagnosis. Especially the noise reduction techniques is quite essential for low-dose biomedical X-ray images obtained from low radiation power in order to protect patients, because their noise level is usually high to well discriminate objects. This paper proposes an efficient method to remove the noise in low-dose X-ray images while preserving the edges with diverse resolutions. In the proposed method, a noisy image is at first decomposed into several images with different resolutions in pyramidal representation, then the stable map of edge confidence is obtained from each of analyzed image using a fuzzy logic-based edge detector. This map is used to adaptively determine the parameter for guided filters, which eliminate the noise while preserving edges in the corresponding image. The filtered images in the pyramid are extended and synthesized into a resulted image using interpolation technique. The superiority of proposed method compared to the median, bilateral, and guided filters has been experimentally shown in terms of noise removal and edge preserving properties.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.79-85
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the cause analysis according to the difference between the pre exposure tube voltage and actual exposure tube voltage in mammography in connection with breast pressure thickness, breast size and body mass index and to find the improvement. The study tracked 377 women age 40 and older among the mammography examiners conducted by the National Health Insurance Corporation. It was analyzed that breast pressure thickness, breast size and body mass index according to the difference between the pre exposure tube voltage and actual exposure tube voltage among the parameters of dose report been sent to the picture archiving communication system with reference to the image with cranio-caudal projection in mammography. As are result, it shows that the thicker the breast thickness, smaller the breast size and lower body mass index, the higher the difference of tube voltage. In conclusion, the minimum tube voltage of mammography machine should be reset in order to set the tube voltage according to breast pressure thickness and breast size that are suitable for our country in mammography, in addition, it was considered that radiologist should make an effort to reduce radiation exposure and make a good quality image with reducing the difference of mammography condition by making a correct exposure condition in case of examining the patients with thin breast pressure and small breast size.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.21-28
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• 2021

Computed tomography (CT) has the problem of having more radiation exposure compared to other radiographic apparatus. There is a low-dose imaging technique for reducing exposure, but it has a disadvantage of increasing noise in the image. To compensate for this, various noise reduction algorithms have been developed that improve image quality while reducing the exposure dose of patients, of which the median modified Wiener filter (MMWF) algorithm that can be effectively applied to CT devices with excellent time resolution has been presented. The purpose of this study is to optimize the mask size of MMWF algorithm and to see the excellence of noise reduction of MMWF algorithm for existing algorithms. After applying the MMWF algorithm with each mask sizes set from the MASH phantom abdominal images acquired using the MATLAB program, which includes Gaussian noise added, and compared the values of root mean square error (RMSE), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), coefficient correlation (CC), and universal image quality index (UQI). The results showed that RMSE value was the lowest and PSNR, CC and UQI values were the highest in the 5 x 5 mask size. In addition, comparing Gaussian filter, median filter, Wiener filter, and MMWF with RMSE, PSNR, CC, and UQI by applying the optimized mask size. As a result, the most improved RMSE, PSNR, CC, and UQI values were showed in MMWF algorithms.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.301-306
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• 2021

The use of tin filters as a way to reduce the medical radiation in computed tomography (CT). However, due to the changed X-ray spectrum with the use of tin filters, disease diagnosis could be affected because it appears as images of different impressions from previous images. Therefore, this study evaluates the changes in images when using tin filter and high pitch in chest low-dose CT. In this study, images were acquired in groups of three for comparison. Group 1 did not apply to tin filter, and used the existing pitch 0.8. Group 2 used a tin filter, pitch 0.8, Group 3 used a tin filter, and pitch 2.5. To compare the image quality, the natural image quality evaluator (NIQE) and the blind/referenceless image quality evaluator (BRISQUE) were used among the blind quality evaluation factors depended on a no-reference basis. As a result, the NIQE values were low in the order of Group 1, Group 3, and Group 2. BRISQUE values were low in the order of Group 3, Group 2 and Group 1. This study confirms the superiority of images of tin filter and high pitch techniques in chest low-dose CT, which is considered to be a fundamental study for acquiring accurate images of patients with difficult breathing control.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.7-15
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• 2007

[ $\underline{Purpose}$ ]: To determine the patterns of evaluation and treatment in patients with breast cancer after mastectomy and treated with radiotherapy. A nationwide study was performed with the goal of improving radiotherapy treatment. $\underline{Materials\;and\;Methods}$: A web- based database system for the Korean Patterns of Care Study (PCS) for 6 common cancers was developed. Randomly selected records of 286 eligible patients treated between 1998 and 1999 from 17 hospitals were reviewed. $\underline{Results}$: The ages of the study patients ranged from 20 to 80 years (median age 44 years). The pathologic T stage by the AJCC was T1 in 9.7% of the cases, T2 in 59.2% of the cases, T3 in 25.6% of the cases, and T4 in 5.3% of the cases. For analysis of nodal involvement, N0 was 7.3%, N1 was 14%, N2 was 38.8%, and N3 was 38.5% of the cases. The AJCC stage was stage I in 0.7% of the cases, stage IIa in 3.8% of the cases, stage IIb in 9.8% of the cases, stage IIIa in 43% of the cases, stage IIIb in 2.8% of the cases, and IIIc in 38.5% of the cases. There were various sequences of chemotherapy and radiotherapy after mastectomy. Mastectomy and chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy was the most commonly performed sequence in 47% of the cases. Mastectomy, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy followed by additional chemotherapy was performed in 35% of the cases, and neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy was performed in 12.5% of the cases. The radiotherapy volume was chest wall only in 5.6% of the cases. The volume was chest wall and supraclavicular fossa (SCL) in 20.3% of the cases; chest wall, SCL and internal mammary lymph node (IMN) in 27.6% of the cases; chest wall, SCL and posterior axillary lymph node in 25.9% of the cases; chest wall, SCL, IMN, and posterior axillary lymph node in 19.9% of the cases. Two patients received IMN only. The method of chest wall irradiation was tangential field in 57.3% of the cases and electron beam in 42% of the cases. A bolus for the chest wall was used in 54.8% of the tangential field cases and 52.5% of the electron beam cases. The radiation dose to the chest wall was $45{\sim}59.4\;Gy$ (median 50.4 Gy), to the SCL was $45{\sim}59.4\;Gy$ (median 50.4 Gy), and to the PAB was $4.8{\sim}38.8\;Gy$, (median 9 Gy) $\underline{Conclusion}$: Different and various treatment methods were used for radiotherapy of the breast cancer patients after mastectomy in each hospital. Most of treatment methods varied in the irradiation of the chest wall. A separate analysis for the details of radiotherapy planning also needs to be followed and the outcome of treatment is needed in order to evaluate the different processes.