• Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging
• /
• v.31 no.3
• /
• pp.135-141
• /
• 2023

BACKGROUND: Global longitudinal strain (GLS) is an accurate and reproducible parameter of left ventricular (LV) systolic function which has shown meaningful prognostic value. Fast, user-friendly, and accurate tools are required for its widespread implementation. We aim to compare a novel web-based tool with two established algorithms for strain analysis and test its reproducibility. METHODS: Thirty echocardiographic datasets with focused LV acquisitions were analyzed using three different semi-automated endocardial GLS algorithms by two readers. Analyses were repeated by one reader for the purpose of intra-observer variability. CAAS Qardia (Pie Medical Imaging) was compared with 2DCPA and AutoLV (TomTec). RESULTS: Mean GLS values were -15.0 ± 3.5% from Qardia, -15.3 ± 4.0% from 2DCPA, and -15.2 ± 3.8% from AutoLV. Mean GLS between Qardia and 2DCPA were not statistically different (p = 0.359), with a bias of -0.3%, limits of agreement (LOA) of 3.7%, and an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.88. Mean GLS between Qardia and AutoLV were not statistically different (p = 0.637), with a bias of -0.2%, LOA of 3.4%, and an ICC of 0.89. The coefficient of variation (CV) for intra-observer variability was 4.4% for Qardia, 8.4% 2DCPA, and 7.7% AutoLV. The CV for inter-observer variability was 4.5%, 8.1%, and 8.0%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: In echocardiographic datasets of good image quality analyzed at an independent core laboratory using a standardized annotation method, a novel web-based tool for GLS analysis showed consistent results when compared with two algorithms of an established platform. Moreover, inter- and intra-observer reproducibility results were excellent.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.45 no.1
• /
• pp.49-55
• /
• 2024

Accurate measurement of blood pressure is essential for classifying an individual's disease, identifying blood pressure-related risks, and managing health. Due to the environmental and health hazards of mercury sphygmomanometers, automatic sphygmomanometers using the oscillometric method are widely used in hospitals as well as in general homes, and have established themselves as a practical standard sphygmomanometer. In this study, we developed a blood pressure simulator using an actuator that provides simulated pressure to an automatic blood pressure cuff. The developed blood pressure simulator adopts an arm-shaped cylindrical shape similar to the situation in which a person measures blood pressure with an automatic blood pressure monitor, and implements a method of transmitting pressure to the cuff using a pressure plate. Accuracy was evaluated through the mean and standard deviation of the difference with the commercialized blood pressure simulator BP PUMP 2, and reproducibility was confirmed using two automatic blood pressure monitors. The developed blood pressure simulator enables automatic blood pressure monitoring in a simple manner and also meets the evaluation standards for accuracy and reproducibility. In the future, as a standardized blood pressure simulator, it is expected to be of great help in evaluating and verifying the performance of automatic blood pressure monitors by supplementing precise hardware and software and building a blood pressure database.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
• /
• v.97 no.3
• /
• pp.274-284
• /
• 2008

For forest valuation, various input data were generally required: for example, slope, timber stocks, logging costs, hauling costs, market values of timber, afforestation costs, thinning costs, and so on. To enhance the efficiency of forest valuation process, it would be helpful to guide how and where to acquire such data sets. Moreover, to make an appraisal of timber assets through the Forestry Household Economy Survey, it would be inevitable to use standardized input data by region or tree species. Therefore, this research intended to develop a methodology of standardizing each input data, and to present its available data sources. Also, a guidance was presented to explain how to control input data within the appraisal process. Then, the appraisal process were analyzed and summarized in four types of information such as system flowchart, process flowcharts, detail flowcharts, and skimmer data, which are essential elements in developing an appraisal software, named EnVAST (Engine of Valuation System for Timber Assets). The software was designed to generate 'the standard forest valuation table' by species and province as the final output that is applicable for the forest valuation through the Forestry Household Economy Survey in Korea.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.37-43
• /
• 2013

Purpose: PET/CT scan using the SUV (Standardized Uptake Value) of radiopharmaceutical uptake in organs and tissues as an objective indicator makes it possible to analyze physiological and chemical reactions of human organs. This study analyzes the change of the SUV uptake in accordance with the way how PET/CT patients take a rest after the injection of $^{18}F-FDG$ (Fluororo-deoxyglucose). And also subjective satisfaction is assessed listening to music while taking a rest. Materials and Methods: From April 2011 until February 2013, Among the Primary cancer patients who admitted to the Catholic Medical Center (Seoul & Bucheon St. Mary's Hospital) and scanned $^{18}F-FDG$ PET/CT and also received care through the tracking test (mean age $55.61{\pm}12.41$ years, 108 people, 48 men and 60 women) were selected. The patients were divided into two groups. The first group (A: basal study) is requested to take a rest in bed quietly after the injection. However the second one (B: follow up study) is requested to listen to the music while taking a rest. And then SUV analysis was performed respectively. At the end of the scan, ROI (Region Of Interest) were set from the center of the liver (right lobe) and 3 spots of the brain (frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes). And the SUV was calculated. To identify the correlation among those ROIs, paired t-test was performed using SPSS software (Version 12.0K for windows, P>0.05). Also, after the PET/CT scan the satisfaction study was conducted of all the patients. 1:1 questionnaire survey was performed, and that questionnaire was made using the Likert 5-point scale. By utilizing those questionnaires, the analysis about simple frequency, percentage, average, and standard deviation was performed. Results: The SUV change of the 4 designated ROIs in accordance with listening to music was not statistically significant. (Frontal lobe P-value=0.611, Occipital lobe P-value=0.499, Temporal lobe P-value=0.717, Liver P-value=0.334: P-value>0.05) And the satisfaction study indicated that group B was appear to be 0.42 points (5 basis points) higher than group A. It showed that patients are more satisfied in group B than group A. Conclusion: when performing PET/CT scan using $^{18}F-FDG$, listening to music after the injection of the radiopharmaceuticals does not affect the SUV but given the state of the psychological comfort that may increase the patient's satisfaction.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.3-16
• /
• 2008

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN for short) is a wireless network consisting of distributed small devices which are called sensor nodes or motes. Recently, there has been an extensive research on WSN and also on its security. For secure storage and secure transmission of the sensed information, sensor nodes should be equipped with cryptographic algorithms. Moreover, these algorithms should be efficiently implemented since sensor nodes are highly resource-constrained devices. There are already some existing algorithms applicable to sensor nodes, including public key ciphers such as TinyECC and standard block ciphers such as AES. Stream ciphers, however, are still to be analyzed, since they were only recently standardized in the eSTREAM project. In this paper, we implement over the MicaZ platform nine software-based stream ciphers out of the ten in the second and final phases of the eSTREAM project, and we evaluate their performance. Especially, we apply several optimization techniques to six ciphers including SOSEMANUK, Salsa20 and Rabbit, which have survived after the final phase of the eSTREAM project. We also present the implementation results of hardware-oriented stream ciphers and AES-CFB fur reference. According to our experiment, the encryption speeds of these software-based stream ciphers are in the range of 31-406Kbps, thus most of these ciphers are fairly acceptable fur sensor nodes. In particular, the survivors, SOSEMANUK, Salsa20 and Rabbit, show the throughputs of 406Kbps, 176Kbps and 121Kbps using 70KB, 14KB and 22KB of ROM and 2811B, 799B and 755B of RAM, respectively. From the viewpoint of encryption speed, the performances of these ciphers are much better than that of the software-based AES, which shows the speed of 106Kbps.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Sensory Integration
• /
• v.21 no.2
• /
• pp.69-83
• /
• 2023

Objective : This study sought to systematically examine the intervention effect of social stories when applied in relation to children with sleep disorders. Methods : Studies available in the SCOPUS, ScienceDirect, PsycArticles, and PubMed databases that were published from 2001 to 2022 were searched. The keywords used for the search were as follows: ("social story" OR "social stories") AND ("sleep" OR "sleep disorders" OR "sleep wake disorder bedtimes" OR "sleep initiation and maintenance disorders" OR "sleep wake disorder" OR "sleep arousal disorders"). Based on the selection criteria, six experimental studies were selected and analyzed. Results : The selected studies were two randomized controlled trials, three individual trials, and one case study. The subjects were mostly children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder who were school-aged or adolescent. The intervention types were often complex interventions, including social stories and other interventions, while the durations of the interventions varied from one day to more than 40 days. The interventions had a positive effect on the subjects' sleep quality, with night wakings, sleep onset delay, and sleep anxiety all being improved. As standardized assessment tools to evaluate the effectiveness of social stories, the Child Sleep Habits Questionnaire and the Child Behavior Checklist were used in two papers each, and were the most commonly used. As non-standardized assessment tools, each of the four papers used turbulence and sleep diaries as assessment tools. Conclusion : The effect of social story mediation can be divided into sleep quality and sleep-related behavior. In terms of sleep quality, studies showing improvements in night wakings, sleep onset delay, and sleep anxiety accounted for a large proportion of the sample. The detailed effect area of sleep quality showed a significant improvement after the interventions in most studies, and in all six studies analyzed in the present study, the continuation of the effect after the intervention was confirmed via follow-up tests. Thus, the findings of this study are expected to be helpful when applying social stories in children with sleep disorders in clinical practice due to presenting the intervention effects, outcome evaluation tools, and intervention periods in children with sleep disorders in prior investigations involving social stories.

• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.260-268
• /
• 2019

Objectives: The Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS), which analyzes and uses electronic health records (EHR) for medical care, pursues patient-centered medical care. It is necessary to establish the CDSS in Korean medical services for objectification and standardization. For this purpose, analyses were performed on the points to be followed for CDSS implementation with a focus on herbal medicine prescription. Methods: To establish the CDSS in the prescription of Traditional Korean Medicine, the current prescription practices of Traditional Korean Medicine doctors were analyzed. We also analyzed whether the prescription support function of the electronic chart was implemented. A questionnaire survey was conducted querying Traditional Korean Medicine doctors working at Traditional Korean Medicine clinics and hospitals, to investigate their desired CDSS functions, and their perceived effects on herbal medicine prescription. The implementation of the CDSS among the audit software developers used by the Korean medical doctors was examined. Results: On average, 41.2% of Traditional Korean Medicine doctors working in Traditional Korean Medicine clinics manipulated 1 to 4 herbs, and 31.2% adjusted 4 to 7 herbs. On average, 52.5% of Traditional Korean Medicine doctors working in Traditional Korean Medicine hospitals adjusted 1 to 4 herbs, and 35.5% adjusted 4 to 7 herbs. Questioning the desired prescription support function in the electronic medical record system, the Traditional Korean Medicine doctors working at Korean medicine clinics desired information on 'medicine name, meridian entry, flavor of medicinals, nature of medicinals, efficacy,' 'herb combination information' and 'search engine by efficacy of prescription.' The doctors also desired compounding contraindications (eighteen antagonisms, nineteen incompatibilities) and other contraindicatory prescriptions, 'medicine information' and 'prescription analysis information through basic constitution analyses.' The implementation of prescription support function varied by clinics and hospitals. Conclusion: In order to implement and utilize the CDSS in a medical service, clinical information must be generated and managed in a standardized form. For this purpose, standardization of terminology, coding of prescriptions using a combination of herbal medicines, and unification such as the preparation method and the weights and measures should be integrated.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Near Infrared Spectroscopy Conference
• /
• 2001.06a
• /
• pp.1121-1121
• /
• 2001

A previous study (Berzaghi et al., 2001) evaluated the performance of 3 calibration methods, modified partial least squares (MPLS), local PLS (LOCAL) and artificial neural networks (ANN) on the prediction of the chemical composition of forages, using a large NIR database. The study used forage samples (n=25,977) from Australia, Europe (Belgium, Germany, Italy and Sweden) and North America (Canada and U.S.A) with reference values for moisture, crude protein and neutral detergent fibre content. The spectra of the samples were collected using 10 different Foss NIR Systems instruments, only some of which had been standardized to one master instrument. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the behaviour of these different calibration methods when predicting the same samples measured on different instruments. Twenty-two sealed samples of different kind of forages were measured in duplicate on seven instruments (one master and six slaves). Three sets of near infrared spectra (1100 to 2500nm) were created. The first set consisted of the spectra in their original form (unstandardized); the second set was created using a single sample standardization (Clone1); the third was created using a multiple sample procedure (Clone6). WinISI software (Infrasoft International Inc., Port Mathilda, PA, USA) was used to perform both types of standardization, Clone1 is just a photometric offset between a “master” instrument and the “slave” instrument. Clone6 modifies both the X-axis through a wavelength adjustment and the Y-axis through a simple regression wavelength by wavelength. The Clone1 procedure used one sample spectrally close to the centre of the population. The six samples used in Clone 6 were selected to cover the range of spectral variation in the sample set. The remaining fifteen samples were used to evaluate the performances of the different models. The predicted values for dry matter, protein and neutral detergent fibre from the master Instrument were considered as “reference Y values” when computing the statistics RMSEP, SEPC, R, Bias, Slope, mean GH (global Mahalanobis distance) and mean NH (neighbourhood Mahalanobis distance) for the 6 slave instruments. From the results we conclude that i) all the calibration techniques gave satisfactory results after standardization. Without standardization the predicted data from the slaves would have required slope and bias correction to produce acceptable statistics. ii) Standardization reduced the errors for all calibration methods and parameters tested, reducing not only systematic biases but also random errors. iii) Standardization removed slope effects that were significantly different from 1.0 in most of the cases. iv) Clone1 and Clone6 gave similar results except for NDF where Clone6 gave better RMSEP values than Clone1. v) GH and NH were reduced by half even with very large data sets including unstandardized spectra.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.11-23
• /
• 2003

Objectives : The 1990s has seen advances in the conceptualization of self-perceived health status which has important roles for individual health and the quality of life. Many types of standardized questionnaires have been developed with the current wide use of SF-36, NHP, andEuroQol. However, the outcomes of these tools may be different with regard to regional, cultural and emotional backgrounds. The purpose of this study was to trial the development of a Korean Health Profile (KHP 1.0) to measure the self-perceived health stati of Koreans. Methods : The KHP 1.0 was designed on the basis of the Medical Outcome Study Form 36 (SF-36), the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP), and the EuroQOL. It was composed of 9 scales; physical functioning, role limitation-physical, pain, general health, energy, social isolation, sleep, role limitation-emotional, and e-motional health. Self-reported chronic disease conditions, and the Zung's Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), were also checked for the evaluation of clinical validity. This study was conducted, from December 2000 to January 2001, on 800 middle-aged parents, with four high school students, with 100 retest sets being conducted two weeks later. From the 800 subjects there were 588 complete responses (effective response 73.5%). The reliability of the test-retest results, and the factor analysis on the validity of the KHP 1.0 components, were evaluated using the SPSS (ver 10.0) software. Results : The reliability of the KHP 1.0 was good with Cronbach's alpha (>0.6), test-retest correlation coefficients (>0.5), but with no significant differences from the paired t-test. From the psychometric validity tests, the 9 scales of the KHP 1.0 were divided into two components; physical and mental, and trimmed to the established model with 55% of the total variance, with the exception of role limitation-emotional. The clinical validity on the basis of the comparison for the four characteristic groups; healthy, physical conditions only, mental conditions only, and physical and mental conditions were also good. Conclusions : The KHP 1.0 appears to be a valid measurement tool of self-perceived health stati of Koreans, although there are limitations, i.e. sample size was too small, a limited number of middle-aged subjects, and it was based on unconfirmed diagnoses, etc. Therefore, further study is required to standardize the assessment.

• Journal of Oriental Neuropsychiatry
• /
• v.27 no.3
• /
• pp.169-184
• /
• 2016

Objectives: To investigate the neurophysiological effect of acupuncture treatment on insomnia patients using quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) and standardized Low Resolution Brain Electromagnetic Tomography method (sLORETA).Background: Insomnia is one of the commonly encountered symptoms in primary medical care. Recent studies of acupuncture for insomnia reported that the acupuncture groups showed significant improvements compared with the control groups. However, the neurophysiological mechanism of acupuncture in the treatment of insomnia has not been revealed and a few studies have measured the effect of acupuncture treatment using QEEG.Methods: Participants who had some problems in initiating or maintaining sleep, or had non-restorative sleep for more than 3 days a week and ISI scores above 8 and below 21 were treated by acupuncture for 2 weeks (3 times a week, total 6 times). We assessed the effectiveness of acupuncture for insomnia by the PSQI (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index) at baseline and at 2 weeks after the end of treatment (4th week). Also, we performed EEG and analysed the EEG data at baseline and at the end of treatment (2nd week) on the linked ears montage using the Neuroguide software program and sLORETA.Results: Thirty-two participants were enrolled and 2 participants dropped out because of personal reasons. Among the 30 participants, EEGs of 12 participants were included in the analysis of QEEG and sLORETA. Total score on the ISI and PSQI was significantly decreased after acupuncture treatment. The number of electrodes exceeding the range of 90% (±1.65) or 95% (±1.96) in the z scored absolute power of beta was significantly decreased after acupuncture treatment. There was no significant change in brain activation between pre- and post-acupuncture using sLORETA.Conclusions: The deviation of absolute power compared to the normative database was significantly decreased after acupuncture treatment in the alpha and beta ranges. Therefore, we suggest that acupuncture treatment for insomnia might be effective through the central nervous system especially in the brain. There are many limitations to drawing any conclusion. Further studies are needed in the future to overcome these limitations.