• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.399-405
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• 2012

The brain is the body's most organized and controlled organ, and it governs various psychological and mental functions. A brain abnormality could greatly affect one's physical and mental abilities, and consequently one's social life. Brain disorders can be broadly categorized into three main afflictions: stroke, brain tumor, and dementia. Among these, stroke is a common disease that occurs owing to a disorder in blood flow, and it is accompanied by a sudden loss of consciousness and motor paralysis. The main types of strokes are infarction and hemorrhage. The exact diagnosis and early treatment of an infarction are very important for the patient's prognosis and for the determination of the treatment direction. In this study, texture features were analyzed in order to develop a prototype auto-diagnostic system for infarction using computer auto-diagnostic software. The analysis results indicate that of the six parameters measured, the average brightness, average contrast, flatness, and uniformity show a high cognition rate whereas the degree of skewness and entropy show a low cognition rate. On the basis of these results, it was suggested that a digital CT image obtained using the computer auto-diagnostic software can be used to provide valuable information for general CT image auto-detection and diagnosis for pre-reading. This system is highly advantageous because it can achieve early diagnosis of the disease and it can be used as supplementary data in image reading. Further, it is expected to enable accurate medical image detection and reduced diagnostic time in final-reading.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.1-8
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• 2020

Objectives: This paper aims to investigate the Donguibogam-based pattern diagnosis by applying natural language processing and machine learning. Methods: A database has been constructed by gathering symptoms and pattern diagnosis from Donguibogam. The symptom sentences were tokenized with nouns, verbs, and adjectives with natural language processing tool. To apply symptom sentences into machine learning, Word2Vec model has been established for converting words into numeric vectors. Using the pair of symptom's vector and pattern diagnosis, a pattern prediction model has been trained through Logistic Regression. Results: The Word2Vec model's maximum performance was obtained by optimizing Word2Vec's primary parameters -the number of iterations, the vector's dimensions, and window size. The obtained pattern diagnosis regression model showed 75% (chance level 16.7%) accuracy for the prediction of Six-Qi pattern diagnosis. Conclusions: In this study, we developed pattern diagnosis prediction model based on the symptom and pattern diagnosis from Donguibogam. The prediction accuracy could be increased by the collection of data through future expansions of oriental medicine classics.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.90-97
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• 2013

The tuberculin skin test (TST) and interferon gamma (IFN-${\gamma}$) release assay (IGRA) have been widely used for diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI). In order to overcome limitations of current LTBI diagnostic methods, the development of a novel molecular assay which is able to measure the IFN-${\gamma}$ messenger RNA (mRNA) expression level after stimulation with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) specific antigen was recently developed. The ability of a molecular assay to detect MTB infection was similar to commercial IGRA however, the optimal incubation time for stimulating IFN-${\gamma}$ was not yet established. Therefore, in this study the direct comparisons of MTB Ag stimulation times (4 and 24 hrs) were performed for diagnosis of MTB infection. Data showed that the coincident rate between QFT-GIT IFN-${\gamma}$ ELISA and IFN-${\gamma}$ RT-PCR (4 hrs) was 88.35% and that of QFT-GIT and IFN-${\gamma}$ RT-PCR (24 hrs) was 70.85%. Based on a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, the 4 hrs-MTB specific Ag stimulation time for IFN-${\gamma}$ RT-PCR had the significant P value, 95% CI value, and AUC (P < 0.0001, 95% CI=0.82 to 1.02, and AUC=0.9214) in comparison with 24 hrs-MTB specific Ag stimulation time (P = 0.009, 95% CI=0.06 to 0.94, and AUC=0.7711). These results show that 4-hr was the most optimal MTB Ag stimulation time for performing IFN-${\gamma}$ RT-PCR. Although semi-quantitative RT-PCR had a few analytical limitations, it might be useful as an alternative molecular diagnostic method for detecting MTB infection.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.149-152
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• 1988

From the analysis of proton NMR signals of human urine it is found that the signals corresponding to a phenolic compound of tyrosine are more frequently observed in cancer urine than in non-cancer urine. An effective reagent is obtained to detect the substance excreted in the urine and to find out a close connection with the result of the NMR analysis. An attempt is made to determine the reagent sensitivity and specificity for cancer diagnosis. The results of the attempt are respectively above 75% for both on an average.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 1990

A simple diffraction grating spectrometer is successfully utilized to distinguish the similar red colored sediments obstained from both of cancer and non-cancer urine reactions caused by the the previous developed reagent for the cancer diagnosis by examining their spectral absorption bands in order to improve its sensitivity and specficity. It is found that the cancer and non-cancer absorp- tion band regions lie between 4250 A and 4750 A and between 5250 A and 5400 A, respectively.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.242-248
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• 2013

Endotoxins are part of the outer membrane of the cell wall of gram-negative bacteria and are continuously released during bacterial growth. Endotoxins typically induce severe sepsis and septic shock, which cause more than 50% of mortalities. Endotoxins are easily measured in the serum by the limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) test. However, a nonspecific result is obtained, because the high concentration of serum proteins disturbs the enzyme reaction of the LAL test. In order to solve this problem, the LAL test was performed in this study after the centrifugation of the boiled serum samples to remove the impurities. As a result, among the various conditions examined, endotoxin measurement with the LAL test was the most accurate and repeatable after centrifugation of the boiled serum at $100^{\circ}C$. Moreover, the endotoxin was accurately and repeatedly measured from the prepared sera of mice that had been administered an intraperitoneal injection of purified lipopolysaccharides (LPS) or E. coli. Therefore, the application of centrifugation to remove impurities from boiled serum gives an accurate measurement of endotoxins in the sera of normal subjects or patients, and this will lead to the improved diagnosis and prevention of diseases caused by endotoxins. In addition, the centrifugation of boiled serum samples should be considered and included in the development of endotoxin test kits.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.140-146
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• 2016

The ultrasound imaging in medical diagnosis has become a popular modality because of its safe, noninvasive, portable, relatively inexpensive, and provides a real-time image formation. However, usefulness of ultrasound imaging is at times limited due to the presence of signal-dependent noise like as speckle. Therefore, noise reduction is very important, as various types of noise generated limits the effectiveness of medical image diagnosis. This paper introduces a speckle noise reduce algorithm using total variation denoising (TVD) in Laplacian pyramid. With this method, speckle is removed by TVD of bandpass ultrasound images in Laplacian pyramid domain. For TVD in each pyramid layer, a ${\lambda}$ is selected by trial-and-error method. The visual comparison of despeckled 'in vivo' ultrasound images from pancreas shows that the proposed method could effectively preserve edges and detailed structures while thoroughly suppressing speckle. For a Simulated B-mode image, contrast-to-noise-ratio (CNR) and signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) were obtained like 4.65 dB and 14.11 dB, respectively. The results show that the proposed method can conduct better than some of the existing methods in terms of the CNR and the SNR.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1997 no.11
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• pp.87-90
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• 1997

Electrical stimulation has been used or diagnosis and treatment of impairment on the auditory system. Unfortunately, there were no standard methods or theoretical background or choosing stimulus conditions because of the lack of understanding on the current propagation through the auditory pathways. Nine guniea pigs, experimental group(A) and control group(B), were used for the experiment. ABR and ECochG were obtained under our experimental conditions, before tinnitus and 1, 6, 12 hours after tinnitus induction using salicylate. Electrical stimulations were applied to the group A, and the changes on ABR/ECochG's correlation coefficients were observed. Results showed that an electrical stimulation brings ABR waveform back to the normal states well in the group A compare to the group B, which proved the effectiveness of the stimulation. Based on the results of this experiment, establishment of an electrical model which provide the quantitative information regarding diagnosis and treatment of tinnitus could be achievied.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.47-53
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• 2009

Urinary bladder cancer is diagnosed through urine cytology and cytoscopy with biopsy. An atypical urothelial cast is often found by voided urine cytology in a papillary urothelial cell carcinoma. The objective of this study is to demonstrate the significance of the evaluation of urinary nuclear matrix protein (NMP22) level and Sure Path Liquid-based cytology (SP-LBC) as compared to the examination of atypical urothelial cast in voided urine sediment for monitoring bladder cancer. From October 2007 to January 2008, we observed 3240 patients who visited the emergency laboratory of urology of Soonchunhyang University, Cheonan Hospital. Both NMP22 measurement and SP-LBC were performed in 31 patients who were positive in an atypical urothelial cast test. In particular, 26 men and 5 women were found to be atypical urothelial cast-positive persons. The average age for both men and women is 61.8. NMP22 test is positive in 23 of 31 cases (74.2%) from patients with atypical urothelial cast, while the test is negative in 8 of 31 cases (25.8%). The percentages of negativity, atypicality, suspicious malignancy, and malignancy in SP-LBC are 25.8% (8/31), 58.1% (18/31), 9.7% (3/31), and 6.5% (2/31), respectively. The relation of NMP22 positivity with the malignant degree in LBC is significant (P<0.01). Two malignant patients resulting from SP-LBC show the same results in histological examination. Overall, the study suggests the usefulness of NMP22 measurement and LBC as well as the examination of atypical urothelial cast for the diagnosis of early bladder cancer.

• The Korean journal of helicobacter and upper gastrointestinal research
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.258-263
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• 2018

Follicular lymphoma is the most common form of low-grade B cell lymphoma. Follicular lymphoma occurs predominantly at lymph node sites and rarely in the gastrointestinal tract. Rare gastrointestinal follicular lymphoma is most commonly found in the small intestine, especially in the duodenum, and appears as multiple granules. However, gastric follicular lymphoma mostly appears as a subepithelial tumor. We observed two primary gastric follicular lymphomas that resembled subepithelial tumors located in the body of the stomach. Endoscopic ultrasound revealed hypoechoic lesions located in the submucosa layer. Since endoscopic forceps biopsies were inconclusive, we performed endoscopic submucosal dissection, which resulted in a final pathologic diagnosis of follicular lymphoma. Because of the indolent nature of gastrointestinal follicular lymphoma, the "watch and wait" strategy can be applied in the early phase. The identification of endoscopic characteristics of gastric follicular lymphoma can be helpful for differential diagnosis and decision of treatment strategy. Therefore, we report two cases of primary gastrointestinal follicular lymphoma diagnosed following endoscopic submucosal dissection.