• Health Policy and Management
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.37-49
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• 2020

Background: Unmet healthcare needs have many advantages for measuring inequalities in healthcare use. However, the existing indicator is difficult to capture the reality of unmet healthcare needs sufficiently and is not quite appropriate in comparing regional inequality. The purpose of this study is to critically analyze the utilization of the unmet healthcare need indicator for regional healthcare inequalities research. Methods: We used the level of healthcare accessibility and healthcare need to categorize the regions that are known to cause differences in healthcare utilization between regions and verified how existing unmet healthcare need indicator is distributed at the regional level. Results: Four types of regions were classified according to the high and low levels of healthcare needs and accessibility. The hypothesis about the regional type expected to have the highest unmet healthcare need was not proved. The hypothesis about the lowest expected regional type was proved, but the difference in the average rate of unmet healthcare needs among regional types was not significant. The standard deviation of the rate of unmet healthcare needs among regions within the same type was also higher than the overall regional variation, which also disproved the whole frame of hypothesis. Conclusion: Failure to prove the hypothesis means the gap between the supposed meaning of the indicator and the reality. In order to understand the current state of healthcare utilization of people in various regions of Korea and to resolve inequality, fundamental research on the in-depth structure and mechanisms of healthcare utilization is needed.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.105-113
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• 2007

In this paper, an image segmentation method which is based on edge salience map and region merging is presented. The edge salience map is calculated by combining a texture edge map with a color edge map. The texture edge map is computed over multiple spatial orientations and frequencies by using Gabor filter. A color edge is computed over the H component of the HSI color model. Then the Watershed transformation technique is applied to the edge salience map to and homogeneous regions where the dissimilarity of color and texture distribution is relatively low. The Watershed transformation tends to over-segment images. To merge the over-segmented regions, first of all, morphological operation is applied to the edge salience map to enhance a contrast of it and also to find mark regions. Then the region characteristics, a Gabor texture vector and a mean color, in the segmented regions is defined and regions that have the similar characteristics, are merged. Experimental results have demonstrated the superiority in segmentation results for various images.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.165-177
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• 2009

This study shed light on searching spatial location pattern of movie theaters by operating screens in theater as proxy variable to find spillover effects and spatial determinants. After taking procedure to find spatial spillover effect by GIS 3D analyst, movie theaters in Seoul metropolitan area are formed in four categorized regions, such as Kangbuk, Kangnam, Kangseo, and Kangdong. Regions which have larger number of screens than others show that they affect to relevant regions directly. In addition, this study analyzes that people have tendencies to visit movie theater while they use other similar facilities such as music, publishing, and public performance facilities. Therefore, trend of agglomeration of similar enterprise including motion picture industry has a spillover effect and economy of scale when they are gathered in specific regions which are specialized as certain usage.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.31 no.12
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• pp.1980-1990
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• 2018

Objective: The aim of this study was to discover the functional impact of non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNPs) that were found in selective sweep regions of the Landrace genome Methods: Whole-genome re-sequencing data were obtained from 40 pigs, including 14 Landrace, 16 Yorkshire, and 10 wild boars, which were generated with the Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform. The nsSNPs in the selective sweep regions of the Landrace genome were identified, and the impacts of these variations on protein function were predicted to reveal their potential association with traits of the Landrace breed, such as reproductive capacity. Results: Total of 53,998 nsSNPs in the mapped regions of pigs were identified, and among them, 345 nsSNPs were found in the selective sweep regions of the Landrace genome which were reported previously. The genes featuring these nsSNPs fell into various functional categories, such as reproductive capacity or growth and development during the perinatal period. The impacts of amino acid sequence changes by nsSNPs on protein function were predicted using two in silico SNP prediction algorithms, i.e., sorting intolerant from tolerant and polymorphism phenotyping v2, to reveal their potential roles in biological processes that might be associated with the reproductive capacity of the Landrace breed. Conclusion: The findings elucidated the domestication history of the Landrace breed and illustrated how Landrace domestication led to patterns of genetic variation related to superior reproductive capacity. Our novel findings will help understand the process of Landrace domestication at the genome level and provide SNPs that are informative for breeding.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.430-434
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• 2018

Candida glabrata is the second most prevalent causative agent for candidiasis following C. albicans. The opportunistic yeast, C. glabrata, is able to cause the critical bloodstream infections in hospitalized patients. Conventional identification methods for yeasts are often time consuming and labor intensive. Therefore, recent studies on sequence-based identification have been conducted. Recently, sequencing the D1/D2 domain of the large subunit ribosomal RNA gene and the internal transcribed spacers (ITS) 1 and ITS2 regions of the ribosomal DNA has proven useful for DNA-based identification of most species of fungi. In the present study, therefore, fungal ITS and D1/D2 domain regions were targeted and analyzed by DNA sequencing for the accurate identification of C. glabrata clinical isolates. A total of 102 C. glabrata clinical isolates from various clinical samples including bloodstream, catheterized urine, bile and other body fluids were used in the study. The results of the DNA sequence analysis showed that the mean standard deviation of species identity percent score between ITS and D1/D2 domain regions was $97.8%{\pm}2.9$ and $99.7%{\pm}0.46$, respectively. These results revealed that the D1/D2 domain region might be a better target for identifying C. glabrata clinical isolates based on DNA sequences than the ITS1 and ITS2 regions. However, in order to evaluate the usefulness of D1/D2 domain region for species identification of all Candida species, other Candida species such as C. albicans, C. tropicalis, C. dubliniensis, and C. krusei should be verified in further studies additionally.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.49-60
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• 2021

Observations of line of sight (LOS) Doppler velocity and non-thermal line width in the off-limb solar corona are often used for investigating the Alfvén wave signatures in the corona. In this study, we compare LOS Doppler velocities and non-thermal line widths obtained simultaneously from two different instruments, Coronal Multichannel Polarimeter (CoMP) and Hinode/EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS), on various off-limb coronal regions: flaring and quiescent active regions, equatorial quiet region, and polar prominence and plume regions observed in 2012-2014. CoMP provides the polarization at the Fe xiii 10747 Å coronal forbidden lines which allows their spectral line intensity, LOS Doppler velocity, and line width to be measured with a low spectral resolution of 1.2 Å in 2-D off limb corona between 1.05 and 1.40 RSun, while Hinode/EIS gives us the EUV spectral information with a high spectral resolution (0.025 Å) in a limited field of view raster scan. In order to compare them, we make pseudo raster scan CoMP maps using information of each EIS scan slit time and position. We compare the CoMP and EIS spectroscopic maps by visual inspection, and examine their pixel to pixel correlations and percentages of pixel numbers satisfying the condition that the differences between CoMP and EIS spectroscopic quantities are within the EIS measurement accuracy: ±3 km s-1 for LOS Doppler velocity and ±9 km s-1 for non-thermal width. The main results are summarized as follows. By comparing CoMP and EIS Doppler velocity distributions, we find that they are consistent with each other overall in the active regions and equatorial quiet region (0.25 ≤ CC ≤ 0.7), while they are partially similar to each other in the overlying loops of prominences and near the bottom of the polar plume (0.02 ≤ CC ≤ 0.18). CoMP Doppler velocities are consistent with the EIS ones within the EIS measurement accuracy in most regions (≥ 87% of pixels) except for the polar region (45% of pixels). We find that CoMP and EIS non-thermal width distributions are similar overall in the active regions (0.06 ≤ CC ≤ 0.61), while they seem to be different in the others (-0.1 ≤ CC ≤ 0.00). CoMP non-thermal widths are similar to EIS ones within the EIS measurement accuracy in a quiescent active region (79% of pixels), while they do not match in the other regions (≤ 61% of pixels); the CoMP observations tend to underestimate the widths by about 20% to 40% compared to the EIS ones. Our results demonstrate that CoMP observations can provide reliable 2-D LOS Doppler velocity distributions on active regions and might provide their non-thermal width distributions.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.23 no.10
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• pp.959-975
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• 2022

Objective: To investigate the agreement and reliability of estimating the volumes and normative percentiles (N%) of segmented brain regions among NeuroQuant (NQ), DeepBrain (DB), and FreeSurfer (FS) software programs, focusing on the comparison between NQ and DB. Materials and Methods: Three-dimensional T1-weighted images of 145 participants (48 healthy participants, 50 patients with mild cognitive impairment, and 47 patients with Alzheimer's disease) from a single medical center (SMC) dataset and 130 participants from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset were included in this retrospective study. All images were analyzed with DB, NQ, and FS software to obtain volume estimates and N% of various segmented brain regions. We used Bland-Altman analysis, repeated measures ANOVA, reproducibility coefficient, effect size, and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) to evaluate inter-method agreement and reliability. Results: Among the three software programs, the Bland-Altman plot showed a substantial bias, the ICC showed a broad range of reliability (0.004-0.97), and repeated-measures ANOVA revealed significant mean volume differences in all brain regions. Similarly, the volume differences of the three software programs had large effect sizes in most regions (0.73-5.51). The effect size was largest in the pallidum in both datasets and smallest in the thalamus and cerebral white matter in the SMC and ADNI datasets, respectively. N% of NQ and DB showed an unacceptably broad Bland-Altman limit of agreement in all brain regions and a very wide range of ICC values (-0.142-0.844) in most brain regions. Conclusion: NQ and DB showed significant differences in the measured volume and N%, with limited agreement and reliability for most brain regions. Therefore, users should be aware of the lack of interchangeability between these software programs when they are applied in clinical practice.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.97-104
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• 1988

This study presents the specific rule governing the image configurations of an extended source for micro lensing of the two body gravitational lens system developed by Chang and Refsdal (1979). Various topological situations of a source are considered in relation to the regions bounded by the so-called critical curves.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.17B no.5
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• pp.363-374
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• 2010

In this paper, we propose the method for extracting Homogeneity Threshold($H_T$) and for segmenting homogeneous regions by USRG(Unseeded Region Growing) with $H_T$. The $H_T$ is a criterion to distinguish homogeneity in neighbor pixels and is computed automatically from the original image by proposed method. Theoretical background for proposed method is based on the Otsu's single level threshold method. The method is used to divide a small local part of original image int o two classes and the sum($\sigma_c$) of standard deviations for the classes to satisfy special conditions for distinguishing as different regions from each other is used to compute $H_T$. To find validity for proposed method, we compare the original image with the image that is regenerated with only the segmented homogeneous regions and show up the fact that the difference between two images is not exist visually and also present the steps to regenerate the image in order the size of segmented homogeneous regions and in order the intensity that includes pixels. Also, we show up the validity of proposed method with various results that is segmented using the homogeneity thresholds($H^*_T$) that is added a coefficient ${\alpha}$ for adjusting scope of $H_T$. We expect that the proposed method can be applied in various fields such as visualization and animation of natural image, anatomy and biology and so on.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.70-77
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• 2012

Objectives: Identify the characteristics related to the suicide rates in rural and urban areas of Korea and discover the factors that influence the suicide rate of the rural and urban areas. Methods: Using the data on causes of death from 2006 to 2008, the suicide rates were calculated and compared after age-standardization based on gender, age group and urbanicity. And, in order to understand the factors that influence suicide rate, total 10 local characteristics in four domains - public service, social integration, residential environment, and economic status - were selected for multiple regression analysis. Results: The suicide rates were higher in men than women, in rural areas than urban, and in older people than the younger. Generally, although there were variations according to age group and urbanicity, suicide rates were significantly related to residential environment and regional economic status but not related to regional welfare spending and social integration. In addition, the population over the age of 65 years, only regional economic status has significantly influence on their suicide rates. Conclusions: The influence of characteristics of regions on suicide rate is various by age-group, gender, and urbanicity. Therefore, in order to lower suicide rate and reduce the gap between regions, various approaches must be adopted by taking into account the socioeconomic characteristics of the regions.