• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.111-118
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• 2019

Chest digital tomosynthesis has become a practical imaging modality because it can solve the problem of anatomy overlapping in conventional chest radiography. However, because of both limited scan angle and finite-size detector, a portion of chest cannot be represented in some or all of the projection. These bring a discontinuity in intensity across the field of view boundaries in the reconstructed slices, which we refer to as the truncation artifacts. The purpose of this study was to reduce truncation artifacts using a weighted normalization approach and to investigate the performance of this approach for our prototype chest digital tomosynthesis system. The system source-to-image distance was 1100 mm, and the center of rotation of X-ray source was located on 100 mm above the detector surface. After obtaining 41 projection views with ${\pm}20^{\circ}$ degrees, tomosynthesis slices were reconstructed with the filtered back projection algorithm. For quantitative evaluation, peak signal to noise ratio and structure similarity index values were evaluated after reconstructing reference image using simulation, and mean value of specific direction values was evaluated using real data. Simulation results showed that the peak signal to noise ratio and structure similarity index was improved respectively. In the case of the experimental results showed that the effect of artifact in the mean value of specific direction of the reconstructed image was reduced. In conclusion, the weighted normalization method improves the quality of image by reducing truncation artifacts. These results suggested that weighted normalization method could improve the image quality of chest digital tomosynthesis.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.316-333
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• 2021

In order to understand basic data for improving the fishing system and fishing vessel structure in coastal improved stow net fishery, a questionnaire survey and on-site hearing were conducted from May 10 to June 11, 2019 to analyze opinions on the improvement of operation status and fishing vessel structure. The questionnaire survey consisted of ten questions on the operation status of coastal improved stow net fishery and six questions on the improvement of fishing vessel structure, and the results of each question were analyzed by the region, the captain's age, the captain's career and the age of fishing vessel. As a result of analyzing opinions on the operation status of the coastal improved stow net fishery, it was found that the average time required for casting net was 32.8 to 33.0 minutes and that the average time required for hauling net was 41.0 to 42.2 minutes which took 10 to 12 minutes more than for casting net. The most important work requiring improvement during fishing operation (the first priority) were 'hauling net operation,' 'readjustment and storage of fishing gear,' and 'fish handling' and the hardest factor in fishing management were in the order of 'reduction of catch,' 'labor shortage' and 'rising labor costs.' The most institutional improvement that is most needed in coastal improved stow net fishery was an 'using fine mesh nets.' Most of the respondent to the questions on the experience in hiring foreign crews was 'either hiring or willing to hire foreign crews,' and the average number of foreign crews employed was found to be 2.3 to 2.4 persons. The most important reason for hiring (or considering employment) foreign crews was 'high labor costs.' The degree of communication with foreign crews during fishing operation were 'moderate' or 'difficult to direct work.' The most important problem in hiring foreign crews (the first priority) was an 'illegal departure.' As the survey results on the opinion of structural improvement of coastal improved stow net fishing vessel, the degree of satisfaction with fishing vessel structure related to fishing operation was found to be somewhat unsatisfactory, with an average of 3.3 points on a five-point scale. The inconvenient structure of fishing vessel in possession (the first priority), the space needed most for the construction of new fishing vessel (the first priority) and the space considered important for the construction of new fishing vessel (the first prioprity) was a 'fish warehouse.' The most preferred equipment for the construction of new fishing vessel were 'engine operation monitoring' and 'navigation safety devices.' The average size (tonnage class), the average horse power and the average total length of fishing vessel for proper profit and safety fishing operation was between 13.8 and 14.0 tonnes, 808.3 to 819.5 H.P. and 23.4 to 23.5 meters, respectively. The results of the operation status of coastal improved stow net fishery and the requirement for improving the fishing vessel structure are expected to be provided as basic data for reference when we build or improve the fishing vessel.

• Journal of Practical Agriculture & Fisheries Research
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.79-94
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• 2009

The research project was conducted to develop a paper bagging machine for grape. This technology was aimed to highly reduce a labor for paper bagging in grape and bakery. In agriculture labor and farm population has rapidly decreased since 1980 in Korea so there was so limit in labor. In particular there is highly population in women and old age at rural area and thus labor cost is so high. Therefore a labor saving technology in agricultural sector might be needed to be replaced these old age with mechanical and labor saving tool in agriculture. The following was summarized of the research results for development of a paper bagging machine for grape. 1. Development of a new paper bagging machine for grape - This machine was designed by CATIA VI2/AUTO CAD2000 programme. - A paper bagging machine was mechanically binded a paper bag of grape which should be light and small size. This machine would be designed for women and old age with convenience during bagging work at the field site. - This machine was manufactured with total weight of less than 350g. - An overage bagging operation was more than 99% at the actual field process. - A paper bagging machine was designed with cartridge type which would be easily operated between rows and grape branches under field condition. - The type of cartridge pin was designed as a C-ring type with the length of 500mm which was good for bagging both grape and bakery. - In particular this machine was developed to easily operated among vines of the grape trees. 2. Field trials of a paper bagging machine in grape - There was high in grape quality as compared to the untreated control at the application of paper bagging machine. - The efficiency of paper bagging machine was 102% which was alternative tool for the conventional. - The roll pin of paper bagging machine was good with 5.3cm in terms of bagging precision. - There was no in grape quality between the paper bagging machine and the conventional method. - Disease infection and grape break was not in difference both treatments.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.91-103
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• 2009

Slope failure depends upon the climatic features related to related rainfall, structural geology and geomorphological features as well as the variation of the mechanical behaviors of soil constituting a slope. In this paper, among many variables, effects of soil layer thickness on the slope failure process, and variations of matric suction and volumetric water content were observed. When the soil layer is relatively thick, the descending wetting front decreases matric suction and the observed matric suction reaches to "0" value. When the wetting front reaches to the impermeable boundary, the bottom surface of steel soil box, ascending wetting front was observed. This observation can be postulated to be the effects of various sizes of pores. When macro size pores exist, the capillary effects can be reduced and infilling of pore will be limited. The partially filled pores would be filled with water during the ascending of the wetting front, which bounces from the impermeable boundary. This assumption has been assured from the observation of variation of the volumetric water contents at different depth. When the soil layer is thick (thickness = 20 cm), for granular material, erosion is a cause triggering the slope failure. It has been found that the initiation of erosion occurs when the top soil is fully saturated. Meanwhile, when the soil layer is shallow (thickness = 10 cm), slope slides as en mass. The slope failure for this condition occurs when the wetting front reaches to the interface between the soil layer and steel soil box. As the wetting front approaches to the bottom of soil layer, reduction of shear resistance along the boundary and increase of the unit weight due to the infiltration occur and these produce complex effects on the slope failure processes.

• Journal of agriculture & life science
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.107-116
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• 2016

The study was aimed to analyze pedigree structure and inbreeding coefficients for performance tested Holstein cows in Korea. A total of 400,029 Holstein cows data which born between 2002 and 2012 were obtained from Dairy Cattle Improvement Center of National Agricultural Cooperative Federation(NACF). Their related pedigrees, as obtained from Korean Animal Improvement Association(KAIA), consisted of 509,740 animals. Pedigree depth of the cows were traced back to 3 generations earlier. The percentage of cows with fully identified ancestors in various provinces of Korea were 55.18%(Gyeonggi-do), 23.49%(Gangwon-do), 47.83%(Chungcheongnam-do), 53.62%(Chungcheongbuk-do), 56.38%(Gyeongsangbuk-do), 51.35% (Gyeongsangnam-do), 26.58%(Jeollanam-do), 49.41%(Jeollabuk-do), and 56.90%(Jeju-do), whereas, it was about 63.20% as a whole in Korea. The average inbreeding coefficients showed increment across the consecutive years of birth such as, 0.43(2002), 0.44(2003), 0.58(2004), 0.64(2005), 0.78(2006), 0.93(2007), 1.08(2008), 1.23(2009), 1.46(2010), 1.77(2011), and 2.03 (2012). However, this coefficient was 0.93 in overall Korean population. An average generation interval for sire to daughter genetic path was 8.15 years; which was about 4.20 years considering dam to daughter genetic path. The estimated effective population sizes (Ne) were 56.5, 51.3, and 32.2 animals born in 2004, 2009, and 2012, respectively. These results indicated that an increased rate of inbreeding has led to a significant reduction in the Ne over the decade.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.903-909
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to compare and analyze the effect of changes in the patient's central position on the exposure dose and image quality of surrounding organs during a chest lateral examination using an Auto Exposure Control(AEC). The experiment was conducted on a human body phantom. A needle was attached to the lower part of the center of the coronal plane of the phantom, and a lead ruler was attached to the lower part of the detector so that the 50 cm point was located at the lower center of the AEC ion chamber. The exposure conditions were 125 kVp, 320 mA, the distance between the source and the image receptor was 180 cm, and the exposure field size was 14 × 17 inches. Only one AEC ion chamber was used at the bottom center, and the density was set to '0' and sensitivity to 'Middle', and the central X-ray was incident vertically toward the 6th thoracic vertebra. With AEC mode applied, the 50 cm point of the needle and lead ruler were aligned and the phantom was moved 5 cm toward the stomach (F5) and 5 cm toward the back (B5), and the dose factor was analyzed by measuring ESD. The ESD of the thyroid gland according to the change in patient center position was 232.60±2.20 μGy for Center, 231.22±1.53 μGy for F5, and 184.37±1.19 μGy for B5, and the ESD of the breast was 288.54±3.03 μGy for Center, F5 was 260.97±1.93 μGy, B5 was 229.80±1.62 μGy, and the ESD of the center of the lung was 337.02±3.25 μGy for Center, F5 was 336.09±2.29 μGy, and B5 was 261.76±1.68 μGy. As a result of comparing the average values of dose factors between each group, the difference in average values was statistically significant (p<0.01), and each group appeared to be independent. As a result of the study, there was no significant difference in the dose to the thyroid, breast, and center of the lung according to the change in the patient's central position, except for the breast (10%) when the patient moved forward about 5 cm. However, movement of about 5 cm posteriorly resulted in an average dose reduction of 23.7%. Additionally, when the patient's central position was moved to the rear, image quality deteriorated.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.78-86
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• 2024

Background: The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the specialty hospital system by comparing the medical use of inpatients who had artificial joint replacement surgery in specialty hospitals and non-specialty hospitals. Methods: This study utilized 2021-2022 healthcare benefit claims data provided by the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service. The dependent variable is inpatient medical use which is measured in terms of charges per case and length of stay. The independent variable was whether the hospital was designated as a specialty hospital, and the control variables were patient-level variables (age, gender, insurer type, surgery type, and Charlson comorbidity index) and medical institution-level variables (establishment type, classification, location, number of orthopedic surgeons, and number of nurses). Results: The results of the multiple regression analysis between charges per case and whether a hospital is designated as a specialty hospital showed a statistically significant negative relationship between charges per case and whether a hospital is designated as a specialty hospital. This suggests a significant low in charges per case when a hospital is designated as a specialty hospital compared to a non-specialty hospital, indicating that there is a difference in medical use outcomes between specialty hospitals and non-specialty hospitals inpatients. Conclusion: The practical implications of this study are as follows. First, the criteria for designating specialty hospitals should be alleviated. In our study, the results show that specialty hospitals have significantly lower per-case costs than non-specialty hospitals. Despite the cost-effectiveness of specialty hospitals, the high barriers to be designated for specialty hospitals have gathered the specialty hospitals in metropolitan and major cities. To address the regional imbalance of specialty hospitals, it is believed that ease the criteria for designating specialty hospitals in non-metropolitan areas, such as introducing "semi-specialty hospitals (tentative name)," will lead to a reduction in health disparities between regions and reduce medical costs. Second, it is necessary to determine the appropriateness of the size of hospitals' medical staff. The study found that the number of orthopedic surgeons and nurses varied in charges per case. Therefore, it is believed that appropriately allocating hospital medical staff can maximize the cost-effectiveness of medical services and ultimately reduce medical costs.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.189-198
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• 2024

Lipreading is one of the important parts of speech recognition, and several studies have been conducted to improve the performance of lipreading in lipreading systems for speech recognition. Recent studies have used method to modify the model architecture of lipreading system to improve recognition performance. Unlike previous research that improve recognition performance by modifying model architecture, we aim to improve recognition performance without any change in model architecture. In order to improve the recognition performance without modifying the model architecture, we refer to the cues used in human lipreading and set other regions such as chin and cheeks as regions of interest along with the lip region, which is the existing region of interest of lipreading systems, and compare the recognition rate of each region of interest to propose the highest performing region of interest In addition, assuming that the difference in normalization results caused by the difference in interpolation method during the process of normalizing the size of the region of interest affects the recognition performance, we interpolate the same region of interest using nearest neighbor interpolation, bilinear interpolation, and bicubic interpolation, and compare the recognition rate of each interpolation method to propose the best performing interpolation method. Each region of interest was detected by training an object detection neural network, and dynamic time warping templates were generated by normalizing each region of interest, extracting and combining features, and mapping the dimensionality reduction of the combined features into a low-dimensional space. The recognition rate was evaluated by comparing the distance between the generated dynamic time warping templates and the data mapped to the low-dimensional space. In the comparison of regions of interest, the result of the region of interest containing only the lip region showed an average recognition rate of 97.36%, which is 3.44% higher than the average recognition rate of 93.92% in the previous study, and in the comparison of interpolation methods, the bilinear interpolation method performed 97.36%, which is 14.65% higher than the nearest neighbor interpolation method and 5.55% higher than the bicubic interpolation method. The code used in this study can be found a https://github.com/haraisi2/Lipreading-Systems.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.83 no.6
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• pp.1342-1353
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• 2022

Purpose We compared the radiation dose and image quality between the 2nd generation and the 3rd generation dual-source single-energy (DSSE) and dual-source dual-energy (DSDE) CT of the abdomen. Materials and Methods We included patients undergoing follow-up abdominal CT after partial or radical nephrectomy in the first 10 months of 2019 (2nd generation DS CT) and the first 10 months of 2020 (3rd generation DS CT). We divided the 320 patients into 4 groups (A, 2nd generation DSSE CT; B, 2nd generation DSDE CT; C, 3rd generation DSSE CT; and D, 3rd generation DSDE CT) (n = 80 each) matched by sex and body mass index. Radiation dose and image quality (objective and subjective qualities) were compared between the groups. Results The mean size-specific dose estimation of 3rd generation DSDE CT group was significantly lower than that of the 2nd generation DSSE CT (42.5%, p = 0.013) and 2nd generation DSDE CT (46.9%, p = 0.015) groups. Interobserver agreement was excellent for the overall image quality (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC]: 0.8867) and image artifacts (ICC: 0.9423). Conclusion Our results showed a considerable reduction in the radiation dose while maintaining high image quality with 3rd generation DSDE CT as compared to the 2nd generation DSDE CT and 2nd generation DSSE CT.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.143-156
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• 2005

Background: The best dose-fractionation regimen of the definitive radiotherapy for cervix cancer remains to be clearly determined. It seems to be partially attributed to the complexity of the affecting factors and the lack of detailed information on external and intra-cavitary fractionation. To find optimal practice guidelines, our experiences of the combination of external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) and high-dose-rate intracavitary brachytherapy (HDR-ICBT) were reviewed with detailed information of the various treatment parameters obtained from a large cohort of women treated homogeneously at a single institute. Materials and Methods: The subjects were 743 cervical cancer patients (Stage IB 198, IIA 77, IIB 364, IIIA 7, IIIB 89 and IVA 8) treated by radiotherapy alone, between 1990 and 1996. A total external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) dose of $23.4\~59.4$ Gy (Median 45.0) was delivered to the whole pelvis. High-dose-rate intracavitary brachytherapy (HDR-IBT) was also peformed using various fractionation schemes. A Midline block (MLB) was initiated after the delivery of $14.4\~43.2$ Gy (Median 36.0) of EBRT in 495 patients, while In the other 248 patients EBRT could not be used due to slow tumor regression or the huge initial bulk of tumor. The point A, actual bladder & rectal doses were individually assessed in all patients. The biologically effective dose (BED) to the tumor ($\alpha/\beta$=10) and late-responding tissues ($\alpha/\beta$=3) for both EBRT and HDR-ICBT were calculated. The total BED values to point A, the actual bladder and rectal reference points were the summation of the EBRT and HDR-ICBT. In addition to all the details on dose-fractionation, the other factors (i.e. the overall treatment time, physicians preference) that can affect the schedule of the definitive radiotherapy were also thoroughly analyzed. The association between MD-BED $Gy_3$ and the risk of complication was assessed using serial multiple logistic regression models. The associations between R-BED $Gy_3$ and rectal complications and between V-BED $Gy_3$ and bladder complications were assessed using multiple logistic regression models after adjustment for age, stage, tumor size and treatment duration. Serial Coxs proportional hazard regression models were used to estimate the relative risks of recurrence due to MD-BED $Gy_{10}$, and the treatment duration. Results: The overall complication rate for RTOG Grades $1\~4$ toxicities was $33.1\%$. The 5-year actuarial pelvic control rate for ail 743 patients was $83\%$. The midline cumulative BED dose, which is the sum of external midline BED and HDR-ICBT point A BED, ranged from 62.0 to 121.9 $Gy_{10}$ (median 93.0) for tumors and from 93.6 to 187.3 $Gy_3$ (median 137.6) for late responding tissues. The median cumulative values of actual rectal (R-BED $Gy_3$) and bladder Point BED (V-BED $Gy_3$) were 118.7 $Gy_3$ (range $48.8\~265.2$) and 126.1 $Gy_3$ (range: $54.9\~267.5$), respectively. MD-BED $Gy_3$ showed a good correlation with rectal (p=0.003), but not with bladder complications (p=0.095). R-BED $Gy_3$ had a very strong association (p=<0.0001), and was more predictive of rectal complications than A-BED $Gy_3$. B-BED $Gy_3$ also showed significance in the prediction of bladder complications in a trend test (p=0.0298). No statistically significant dose-response relationship for pelvic control was observed. The Sandwich and Continuous techniques, which differ according to when the ICR was inserted during the EBRT and due to the physicians preference, showed no differences in the local control and complication rates; there were also no differences in the 3 vs. 5 Gy fraction size of HDR-ICBT. Conclusion: The main reasons optimal dose-fractionation guidelines are not easily established is due to the absence of a dose-response relationship for tumor control as a result of the high-dose gradient of HDR-ICBT, individual differences In tumor responses to radiation therapy and the complexity of affecting factors. Therefore, in our opinion, there is a necessity for individualized tailored therapy, along with general guidelines, in the definitive radiation treatment for cervix cancer. This study also demonstrated the strong predictive value of actual rectal and bladder reference dosing therefore, vaginal gauze packing might be very Important. To maintain the BED dose to less than the threshold resulting in complication, early midline shielding, the HDR-ICBT total dose and fractional dose reduction should be considered.