• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.136-141
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• 2003

We assessed the intermediate-term result of tricuspid annuloplasty (TAP) for tricuspid valve regurgitation (TR) associated with congenital heart disease in adults. Risk factors for residual TR were also analysed. Material and Method: From August 1989 to June 2001, seventy three adult patients, 51 females and 22 males, underwent TAP for TR associated with various congenital heart disease. Their age ranged from 46 years to 73 years (mean:43). Associated heart anomalies were atrial septal defect (55), ventricular septal defect (6), partial anomalous pulmonary venous return (4) and others (8). Preoperative and post-operative TR velocities were 3.25 m/sec and 2.56 m/sec respectively, and the types of TAP were De Vega in 43, Kay in 18 and Ring annuloplasty in 12. Postoperative follow-up duration was 2,347 patient-month (mean: 32.6 months), and 134 two-dimensional echocardiographic examinations were done during this period. Residual TR greater than III/IV was considered as TAP failure. Result: TAP failure was observed in 7 patients (9.6%), and one patient among them underwent tricuspid valve replacement. Risk factors for TAP failure were diagnosis other than atrial septal defect (p=0.001), preoperative (p=0.038) and postoperative (p=0.028) high TR velocity. There was no statistical significance in terms of TAP methods. Conclusion: Careful evaluation of valve morphology and aggressive surgical intervention are mandatory for the repair of TR with preoperative or residual RV pressure overload.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.50 no.7
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• pp.455-465
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• 2017

Understanding of the two-dimensional velocity field is crucial in terms of analyzing various hydrodynamic and fluvial processes in the riverine environments. Until recently, many numerical models have played major roles of providing such velocity field instead of in-situ flow measurements, because there were limitations in instruments and methodologies suitable for efficiently measuring in the broad range of river reaches. In the last decades, however, the advent of modernized instrumentations started to revolutionize the flow measurements. Among others, acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) became very promising especially for accurately assessing streamflow discharge, and they are also able to provide the detailed velocity field very efficiently. Thus it became possible to capture the velocity field only with field observations. Since most of ADCPs measurements have been mostly conducted in the cross-sectional lines despite their capabilities, it is still required to apply appropriate interpolation methods to obtain dense velocity field as likely as results from numerical simulations. However, anisotropic nature of the meandering river channel could have brought in the difficulties for applying simple spatial interpolation methods for handling dynamic flow velocity vector, since the flow direction continuously changes over the curvature of the channel shape. Without considering anisotropic characteristics in terms of the meandering, therefore, conventional interpolation methods such as IDW and Kriging possibly lead to erroneous results, when they dealt with velocity vectors in the meandering channel. Based on the consecutive ADCP cross-sectional measurements in the meandering river channel. For this purpose, the geographic coordinate with the measured ADCP velocity was converted from the conventional Cartesian coordinate (x, y) to a curvilinear coordinate (s, n). The results from application of A-VIM showed significant improvement in accuracy as much as 41.5% in RMSE.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.414-424
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• 1998

Purpose: Cross-modality coregistration of positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MR) could enhance the clinical information. In this study we propose a refined technique to improve the robustness of registration, and to implement more realistic visualization of the coregistered images. Materials and Methods: Using the sinogram of PET emission scan, we extracted the robust head boundary and used boundary-enhanced PET to coregister PET with MR. The pixels having 10% of maximum pixel value were considered as the boundary of sinogram. Boundary pixel values were exchanged with maximum value of sinogram. One hundred eighty boundary points were extracted at intervals of about 2 degree using simple threshold method from each slice of MR images. Best affined transformation between the two point sets was performed using least square fitting which should minimize the sum of Euclidean distance between the point sets. We reduced calculation time using pre-defined distance map. Finally we developed an automatic coregistration program using this boundary detection and surface matching technique. We designed a new weighted normalization technique to display the coregistered PET and MR images simultaneously. Results: Using our newly developed method, robust extraction of head boundary was possible and spatial registration was successfully performed. Mean displacement error was less than 2.0 mm. In visualization of coregistered images using weighted normalization method, structures shown in MR image could be realistically represented. Conclusion: Our refined technique could practically enhance the performance of automated three dimensional coregistration.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.111-125
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• 2011

Clustering is a process of grouping similar or relevant documents into a cluster and assigning a meaningful concept to the cluster. By this process, clustering facilitates fast and correct search for the relevant documents by narrowing down the range of searching only to the collection of documents belonging to related clusters. For effective clustering, techniques are required for identifying similar documents and grouping them into a cluster, and discovering a concept that is most relevant to the cluster. One of the problems often appearing in this context is the detection of a complex concept that overlaps with several simple concepts at the same hierarchical level. Previous clustering methods were unable to identify and represent a complex concept that belongs to several different clusters at the same level in the concept hierarchy, and also could not validate the semantic hierarchical relationship between a complex concept and each of simple concepts. In order to solve these problems, this paper proposes a new clustering method that identifies and represents complex concepts efficiently. We developed the Hierarchical Overlapping Clustering (HOC) algorithm that modified the traditional Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering algorithm to allow overlapped clusters at the same level in the concept hierarchy. The HOC algorithm represents the clustering result not by a tree but by a lattice to detect complex concepts. We developed a system that employs the HOC algorithm to carry out the goal of complex concept detection. This system operates in three phases; 1) the preprocessing of documents, 2) the clustering using the HOC algorithm, and 3) the validation of semantic hierarchical relationships among the concepts in the lattice obtained as a result of clustering. The preprocessing phase represents the documents as x-y coordinate values in a 2-dimensional space by considering the weights of terms appearing in the documents. First, it goes through some refinement process by applying stopwords removal and stemming to extract index terms. Then, each index term is assigned a TF-IDF weight value and the x-y coordinate value for each document is determined by combining the TF-IDF values of the terms in it. The clustering phase uses the HOC algorithm in which the similarity between the documents is calculated by applying the Euclidean distance method. Initially, a cluster is generated for each document by grouping those documents that are closest to it. Then, the distance between any two clusters is measured, grouping the closest clusters as a new cluster. This process is repeated until the root cluster is generated. In the validation phase, the feature selection method is applied to validate the appropriateness of the cluster concepts built by the HOC algorithm to see if they have meaningful hierarchical relationships. Feature selection is a method of extracting key features from a document by identifying and assigning weight values to important and representative terms in the document. In order to correctly select key features, a method is needed to determine how each term contributes to the class of the document. Among several methods achieving this goal, this paper adopted the $x^2$�� statistics, which measures the dependency degree of a term t to a class c, and represents the relationship between t and c by a numerical value. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the HOC algorithm, a series of performance evaluation is carried out by using a well-known Reuter-21578 news collection. The result of performance evaluation showed that the HOC algorithm greatly contributes to detecting and producing complex concepts by generating the concept hierarchy in a lattice structure.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.183-188
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• 2008

Aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of 2D ion chamber array as a substitute of the water phantom system in a periodic Linac QA. For the feasibility study, a commercial ion chamber matrix was used as a substitute of the water phantom in the measurement for a routine QA beam properties. The device used in this study was the I'm RT MatriXX (Wellhofer Dosimetrie, Germany). The MatriXX consists of a 1,020 vented ion chamber array, arranged in $24{\times}24\;cm^2$ matrix. Each ion chamber has a volume of $0.08\;cm^3$, spacing of 0.762 cm. We investigated dosimetric parameters such as dose symmetry, energy ($TPR_{20,10}$), and absolute dose for comparing with the water phantom data with a Farmer-type ionization chamber (FC65G, Wellhofer Dosimetrie, Germany). For the MatriXX measurements, we used the white polystyrene phantom (${\rho}:\;1.18\;g/cm^3$) and also considered the intrinsic layer (${\rho}:\;1.06\;g/cm^3$, t: 0.36 cm) of MatriXX to be equivalent to water depth. In the preliminary study of geometrical QA using MatriXX, the rotation axis of collimator and half beam junction test were included and compared with film measurements. Regarding the dosimetrical QA, the MatriXX has shown good agreements within ${\pm}1%$ compared to the water phantom measurements. In the geometrical test, the data from MatriXX were comparable with those from the films. In conclusion, the MatriXX is a good substitute for water phantom system and film measurements. In addition, the results indicate that the MatriXX as a cost-effective novel QA tool to reduce time and personnel power.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.122-125
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• 2004

In radiotherapy of tumors in liver, enough planning target volume (PTV) margins are necessary to compensate breathing-related movement of tumor volumes. To overcome the problems, this study aims to obtain patients' body movements by using a moving phantom and an ultrasonic sensor, and to develop respiration gating techniques that can adjust patients' beds by using reversed values of the data obtained. The phantom made to measure patients' body movements is composed of a microprocessor (BS II, 20 MHz, 8K Byte), a sensor (Ultra-Sonic, range 3 cm ${\sim}$3 m), host computer (RS232C) and stepping motor (torque 2.3Kg) etc., and the program to control and operate it was developed. The program allows the phantom to move within the maximum range of 2 cm, its movements and corrections to take place in order, and x, y and z to move successively. After the moving phantom was adjusted by entering random movement data(three dimensional data form with distance of 2cm), and the phantom movements were acquired using the ultra sonic sensor, the two data were compared and analyzed. And then, after the movements by respiration were acquired by using guinea pigs, the real-time respiration gating techniques were drawn by operating the phantom with the reversed values of the data. The result of analyzing the acquisition-correction delay time for the three types of data values and about each value separately shows that the data values coincided with one another within 1% and that the acquisition-correction delay time was obtained real-time (2.34 ${\times}$ 10$^{-4}$sec). This study successfully confirms the clinic application possibility of respiration gating techniques by using a moving phantom and an ultra sonic sensor. With ongoing development of additional analysis system, which can be used in real-time set-up reproducibility analysis, it may be beneficially used in radiotherapy of moving tumors.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.94-99
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• 2004

Purpose : To investigate the signal enhancement ratio by NOE effect on in vivo $^{31}P$ MRS in human heart muscle and liver. we also evaluated the enhancement ratios of different phosphorus metabolites, which are important in 31P MRS for each organ. Materials and Methods : Ten normal subjects (M:F = 8:2, age range = 24-32 yrs) were included for in vivo $^{31}P$ MRS measurements on a 1.5 T whole-body MRI/MRS system using $^1H-^{31}P$ dual tuned surface coil. Two-dimensional Chemical Shift Imaging (2D CSI) pulse sequence for $^{31}P$ MRS was employed in all $^{31}P$ MRS measurements. First, $^{31}P$ MRS performed without NOE effect and then the same 2D CSI data acquisitions were repeated with NOE effect. After postprocessing the MRS raw data in the time domain, the signal enhancements in percent were estimated from the major metabolites. Results : The calculated NOE enhancement for liver $^{31}P$ MRS were $\alpha-ATP\;(7\%),\;\beta-ATP\;(9\%),\;\gamma-ATP\;(17\%),\;Pi\;(1\%),\;PDE\;(19\%)$ and $PME\;(31\%)$. Because there is no creatine kinase activity in liver, PCr signal is absent. For cardiac $^{31}P$ MRS, whole body coil gave better scout images and thus better localization than surface coil. In $^{31}P$cardiac multi-voxel spectra, DPG signal increased from left to right according to the amount of blood included. The calculated enhancement for cardiac $^{31}P$ MRS were : $\alpha-ATP\;(12\%),\;\beta-ATP\;(19\%),\;\gamma-ATP\;(30\%),\;PCr\;(34\%),\;Pi\;(20\%),\;(PDE)\;(51\%),\;and\;DPG\;(72\%)$. Conclusion : Our results revealed that the NOE effect was more pronounced in heart muscle than in liver with different coupling to 1H spin system and thus different heteronuclear cross-relaxation.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.31 no.8
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• pp.776-780
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• 1998

Background: In patients with coronary artery disease, dysfunctional hypoperfused myocardium at rest may represent either nonviable or viable hibernating myocardium. Two-dimensional echocardiography can detect regional wall motion abnormalities resulting from myocardial ischemia by dobutamine infusion. The purpose of the present study was to identify the prediction of improvement of regional left ventricular(LV) function after surgical revascularization. Materials and methods: Sixteen patients with chronic regional LV dysfunction underwent dobutamine stress echocardiography(DSE) (dobutamine: baseline, 5, 10, 20$\mu$g/kg/min) before coronary artery bypass grafting(CABG) and underwent echocardiography at least 2 months after CABG. Results: All patients were male with mean age of 58 years ranging from 42 to 73 years. The mean LV ejection fraction was 41.8% with a range from 19% to 55%. During DSE, there were no complications, also, there were no operative morbidities or mortalities. Improvement of wall motion within the dysfunctional myocardium was found in 8(50%) of 16 patients in DSE. Among them, 6 patients(75%) showed functional recovery after CABG. Another 8 patients did not show improvement of wall motion in DSE. But among them, 3 patients(38%) showed functional recovery after CABG. 84 dysfunctional segments were found in 256 segments of 16 patients. Improvement of wall motion was found in 34 of 84 segments in DSE. Among them, 23 segments(74%) showed functional recovery after CABG. Another 53 segments did not show improvement of wall motion in DSE. But among them, 12 segments(23%) showed functional recovery after CABG. The sensitivity and specificity of DSE for the prediction of postoperative improvement of segmental wall motion were 66% and 84%, respectively. The positive and negative predictive value of DSE were 74% and 77%, respectively. In patients with chronic regional LV dysfunction, think that DSE is a good predictor of the improvement of dysfunctional segments after CABG.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.384-398
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• 2015

In this paper, the high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting/Noah-MultiParameterization (WRF/Noah-MP) modeling system is configured for the Cheongmicheon Farmland site in Korea (CFK), and its performance in land and atmospheric simulation is evaluated using the observed data at CFK during the 2014 special observation period (21 August-10 September). In order to explore the usefulness of turning on Noah-MP dynamic vegetation in midterm simulations of surface and atmospheric variables, two numerical experiments are conducted without dynamic vegetation and with dynamic vegetation (referred to as CTL and DVG experiments, respectively). The main results are as following. 1) CTL showed a tendency of overestimating daytime net shortwave radiation, thereby surface heat fluxes and Bowen ratio. The CTL experiment showed reasonable magnitudes and timing of air temperature at 2 m and 10 m; especially the small error in simulating minimum air temperature showed high potential for predicting frost and leaf wetness duration. The CTL experiment overestimated 10-m wind and precipitation, but the beginning and ending time of precipitation were well captured. 2) When the dynamic vegetation was turned on, the WRF/Noah-MP system showed more realistic values of leaf area index (LAI), net shortwave radiation, surface heat fluxes, Bowen ratio, air temperature, wind and precipitation. The DVG experiment, where LAI is a prognostic variable, produced larger LAI than CTL, and the larger LAI showed better agreement with the observed. The simulated Bowen ratio got closer to the observed ratio, indicating reasonable surface energy partition. The DVG experiment showed patterns similar to CTL, with differences for maximum air temperature. Both experiments showed faster rising of 10-m air temperature during the morning growth hours, presumably due to the rapid growth of daytime mixed layers in the Yonsei University (YSU) boundary layer scheme. The DVG experiment decreased errors in simulating 10-m wind and precipitation. 3) As horizontal resolution increases, the models did not show practical improvement in simulation performance for surface fluxes, air temperature, wind and precipitation, and required three-dimensional observation for more agricultural land spots as well as consistency in model topography and land cover data.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.331-343
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• 2017

In this study to improve stability, workability and economics of the H-Pile+Earth plate or H-Pile+Earth plate+Cutoff grouting currently in use, we had developed HCS method belonging to the retaining wall which is consisting of a combination H-Pile, Plastic Sheet Pile and Steel Square Pipe for gap maintenance and reinforcement of flexible plastic Sheet Pile, and the behavior of each member composing HCS method is investigated by three-dimensional finite element analysis. To numerically analyze the behavior of the HCS method, we have performed extensive three-dimentional finite element analysis for three kinds of plastic Sheet Pile size, two kinds of H-Pile size and three kinds of H-Pile installation interval, one kinds of Steel Square Pipe and three kinds of Steel Square Pipe installation interval. After analyzing the numerical results, we found that the combinations of $P.S.P-460{\times}131.5{\times}7t$ (PS7) and H-Pile $250{\times}250{\times}9{\times}14$ (H250), $P.S.P473{\times}133.5{\times}9t$ (PS9) and H-Pile $300{\times}200{\times}9{\times}14$ (H300) is the most economical because these combinations are considered to have a stress ratio (=applied stress/allowable stress) close to that as the stiffness of H-Pile, plastic Sheet Pile and Steel Square Pipe composite increased, the horizontal displacement of the retaining wall and the vertical displacement of the upper ground decreased. Especially, due to the arching effects caused by the difference in stiffness between H-Pile and plastic Sheet Pile, a large part of the earth pressure acting on plastic Sheet Pile caused a stress transfer to H-Pile, and the stress and displacement of plastic Sheet Pile were small. Through this study, we can confirm the behavior of each member constituting the HCS method, and based on the confirmed results of this study, it can be used to apply HCS method in reasonable, stable and economical way in the future.