• Title/Summary/Keyword: evaluation tool

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Relationship of Maternal Perception of the Infant Temperament and Confidence and Satisfaction of Maternal Role (어머니가 지각한 영아기질과 어머니 역할수행에 대한 자신감 및 만족도의 관계)

  • Lee Young-Eun;Kang Yang-Hee;Park Hae-Sun;Hwang Eun-Ju;Mun Mi-Young
    • Child Health Nursing Research
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    • v.9 no.2
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    • pp.206-220
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    • 2003
  • Purpose: this study was intended to search the relationship between perception of the infant temperament in mother of infant at the age of 1~12 months and maternal confidence and satisfaction in performing maternal role, and to submit a basic data to establish a nursing intervention program which is helpful for determination of infant development and performing maternal role promotion by identify variables associated with infant temperament. Method: The subjects of this study were 300 mothers of infant at the age of 1~12 months who visited well baby clinic in 4 hospitals in Busan city and Kyoung-Nam province. Final analysis was performed in 293 cases. Seven cases was excluded in this study because of its inappropriate data collection. The data was collected from 1st July to 15th August 2002. The questionaries which were fill-up by mother were collected. Infant temperament was measured by using the tool of 'what my baby is like'(WBL) which was developed by Priham et. al.(1994) and translated by Bang(1999). The scale of postpartum self evaluation which was developed by Lederman et al(1981) and translated by Lee(1992) was used for the confidence and satisfaction of maternal role. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS-PC for window, version 10.0: frequency, percentage, minimum, maximum, mean, SD, t-test, ANOVA, Post-hoc test(Scheffe's test), Pearson Correlation Coefficients. Result: The mean score of maternal perception of the infant temperament was 6.17±1.04, and mother recognized her infant as positive. The mean score of confidence of maternal role was 2.89± .41 and this revealed in an average level. The mean score of satisfaction of maternal role was 3.29± .51 and this revealed in a higher level. There was a weak significant positive correlation between the score of maternal perception of infant temperament and confidence of maternal role(r=0.176, P= .003), but there was no significant correlation between satisfaction of maternal role(P> .05). It revealed the more maternal perception of the infant temperament as positive, the higher confidence of maternal role. There was a moderate significant positive correlation between confidence of maternal role and satisfaction of maternal role(r=0.410, P= .000). It revealed the more confidence of maternal role, the higher satisfaction of maternal role. The variables related with the score of maternal perception of infant temperament were the type of delivery (t=-2.600, P= .010), experience of learning baby care(t=2.382, P= .018), maternal perception on baby's health status(F=3.467, P= .033), maternal perception on her health status(F=3.467, P= .027), baby's age(F=3.080, P= .028). Conclusion: Our result showed the confidence of maternal role was increased as the maternal perception of infant temperament was positive, and conformed that the confidence of maternal role was also related with satisfaction of maternal role. Prenatal education, type of delivery, baby's age were also related with the maternal perception of infant temperament. So, nursing intervention program of developmental stage maybe necessary in order to help maternal perception of infant temperament as positive, and it will be increased the confidence of maternal role and satisfaction of performing maternal role which was considered as real indicate of achievement of maternal role.

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Reliability and Validity of the Fatigue Severity Scale among University Student in South Korea (대학교 재학생에서 Fatigue Severity Scale의 신뢰도 및 타당도 연구)

  • Lee, Junghyun H.;Jeong, Hyeonseok S.;Lim, Soo Mee;Cho, Han Byul;Ma, Ji-Young;Ko, Eun;Im, Jooyeon J.;Lee, Sun Hea;Bae, Sujin;Lee, Yu-Jin;Lyoo, In Kyoon;Jeong, Do-Un
    • Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.6-11
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    • 2013
  • Objectives There are only a limited number of studies on instruments assessing fatigue in university students, although fatigue exerts negative influences on their health and academic performances and fatigue-related complaints are more frequently reported in young adults than middle-aged adults. The aim of this study was to validate the 9-item Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) among university students including both undergraduate and graduate students in South Korea. Methods A total of 176 university students completed a battery of self-report questionnaires, including the FSS, the Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI), the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 version 2 (MOS-SF36v2), and the Inclusion of Community in the Self Scale (ICS). The data were collected from February of 2012 to June of 2012. The reliability, convergent validity, divergent validity, and exploratory factor analyses were conducted to assess psychometric properties of the FSS. Results The mean FSS score was 3.20 (standard deviation = 1.43). The FSS demonstrated an excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ = 0.93) and item-total correlations ranged from 0.56 to 0.90. Correlations of the FSS with the BFI (r = 0.71, p < 0.01), BDI-II (r = 0.54, p < 0.01), BAI (r = 0.46, p < 0.01), MOS-SF36v2 physical component summary (r = -0.28, p < 0.01), MOS-SF36v2 mental component summary (r = -0.55, p < 0.01), and ICS (Spearman's rho = -0.07, p = 0.33) showed acceptable convergent and divergent validity. Exploratory factor analysis defined one underlying factor (eigenvalue = 5.67) that explained 93.50% of the total variance. Conclusions To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate reliability and validity of the FSS in university students. The FSS exhibits good psychometric properties for evaluation of fatigue among university students in South Korea. Since the FSS is easy to administer, score, and interpret, it could be a useful tool in research and practice for assessing fatigue among university students.

The Verification of Computer Simulation of Nitinol Wire Stent Using Finite Element Analysis (유한요소법을 이용한 나이티놀 와이어 스텐트의 전산모사 실험 데이터 검증)

  • Kim, Jin-Young;Jung, Won-Gyun;Jeon, Dong-Min;Shin, Il-Gyun;Kim, Han-Ki;Shin, Dong-Oh;Kim, Sang-Ho;Suh, Tae-Suk
    • Progress in Medical Physics
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.139-144
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    • 2009
  • Recently, the mathematical analysis of stent simulation has been improved, with the help of development of various tool which measure mechanical property and location of stent in artery. The most crucial part of the stent modeling is how to design ideal stent and to evaluate the interaction between stent and artery. While there has been great deal of researches on the evaluation of the expansion, stress distribution, deformation of the stent in terms of the various parameters, few verification through computer simulation has been performed about deformation and stress distribution of the stent. In this study, we have produced the corresponding results between experimental test using Universal Testing Machine and computer simulation for the ideal model of stent. Also, we have analyzed and compared stress distribution of stent in the cases of that with membrane and that without membrane. The results of this study would provide minimum change of plan and good quality for ideal stent replacing damaged artery through the analysis using computer simulation in the early stage of stent design.

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A Study on groundwater and pollutant recharge in urban area: use of hydrochemical data

  • Lee, Ju-Hee;Kwon, Jang-Soon;Yun, Seong-Taek;Chae, Gi-Tak;Park, Seong-Sook
    • Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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    • 2004.09a
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    • pp.119-120
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    • 2004
  • Urban groundwater has a unique hydrologic system because of the complex surface and subsurface infrastructures such as deep foundation of many high buildings, subway systems, and sewers and public water supply systems. It generally has been considered that increased surface impermeability reduces the amount of groundwater recharge. On the other hand, leaks from sewers and public water supply systems may generate the large amounts of recharges. All of these urban facilities also may change the groundwater quality by the recharge of a myriad of contaminants. This study was performed to determine the factors controlling the recharge of deep groundwater in an urban area, based on the hydrogeochemical characteristics. The term ‘contamination’ in this study means any kind of inflow of shallow groundwater regardless of clean or contaminated. For this study, urban groundwater samples were collected from a total of 310 preexisting wells with the depth over 100 m. Random sampling method was used to select the wells for this study. Major cations together with Si, Al, Fe, Pb, Hg and Mn were analyzed by ICP-AES, and Cl, N $O_3$, N $H_4$, F, Br, S $O_4$and P $O_4$ were analyzed by IC. There are two groups of groundwater, based on hydrochemical characteristics. The first group is distributed broadly from Ca-HC $O_3$ type to Ca-C1+N $O_3$ type; the other group is the Na+K-HC $O_3$ type. The latter group is considered to represent the baseline quality of deep groundwater in the study area. Using the major ions data for the Na+K-HC $O_3$ type water, we evaluated the extent of groundwater contamination, assuming that if subtract the baseline composition from acquired data for a specific water, the remaining concentrations may indicate the degree of contamination. The remainder of each solute for each sample was simply averaged. The results showed that both Ca and HC $O_3$ represent the typical solutes which are quite enriched in urban groundwater. In particular, the P$CO_2$ values calculated using PHREEQC (version 2.8) showed a correlation with the concentrations of maior inorganic components (Na, Mg, Ca, N $O_3$, S $O_4$, etc.). The p$CO_2$ values for the first group waters widely ranged between about 10$^{-3.0}$ atm to 10$^{-1.0}$ atm and differed from those of the background water samples belonging to the Na+K-HC $O_3$ type (<10$^{-3.5}$ atm). Considering that the p$CO_2$ of soil water (near 10$^{-1.5}$ atm), this indicates that inflow of shallow water is very significant in deep groundwaters in the study area. Furthermore, the P$CO_2$ values can be used as an effective parameter to estimate the relative recharge of shallow water and thus the contamination susceptibility. The results of our present study suggest that down to considerable depth, urban groundwater in crystalline aquifer may be considerably affected by the recharge of shallow water (and pollutants) from an adjacent area. We also suggest that for such evaluation, careful examination of systematically collected hydrochemical data is requisite as an effective tool, in addition to hydrologic and hydrogeologic interpretation.ion.ion.

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A digital Audio Watermarking Algorithm using 2D Barcode (2차원 바코드를 이용한 오디오 워터마킹 알고리즘)

  • Bae, Kyoung-Yul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.97-107
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    • 2011
  • Nowadays there are a lot of issues about copyright infringement in the Internet world because the digital content on the network can be copied and delivered easily. Indeed the copied version has same quality with the original one. So, copyright owners and content provider want a powerful solution to protect their content. The popular one of the solutions was DRM (digital rights management) that is based on encryption technology and rights control. However, DRM-free service was launched after Steve Jobs who is CEO of Apple proposed a new music service paradigm without DRM, and the DRM is disappeared at the online music market. Even though the online music service decided to not equip the DRM solution, copyright owners and content providers are still searching a solution to protect their content. A solution to replace the DRM technology is digital audio watermarking technology which can embed copyright information into the music. In this paper, the author proposed a new audio watermarking algorithm with two approaches. First, the watermark information is generated by two dimensional barcode which has error correction code. So, the information can be recovered by itself if the errors fall into the range of the error tolerance. The other one is to use chirp sequence of CDMA (code division multiple access). These make the algorithm robust to the several malicious attacks. There are many 2D barcodes. Especially, QR code which is one of the matrix barcodes can express the information and the expression is freer than that of the other matrix barcodes. QR code has the square patterns with double at the three corners and these indicate the boundary of the symbol. This feature of the QR code is proper to express the watermark information. That is, because the QR code is 2D barcodes, nonlinear code and matrix code, it can be modulated to the spread spectrum and can be used for the watermarking algorithm. The proposed algorithm assigns the different spread spectrum sequences to the individual users respectively. In the case that the assigned code sequences are orthogonal, we can identify the watermark information of the individual user from an audio content. The algorithm used the Walsh code as an orthogonal code. The watermark information is rearranged to the 1D sequence from 2D barcode and modulated by the Walsh code. The modulated watermark information is embedded into the DCT (discrete cosine transform) domain of the original audio content. For the performance evaluation, I used 3 audio samples, "Amazing Grace", "Oh! Carol" and "Take me home country roads", The attacks for the robustness test were MP3 compression, echo attack, and sub woofer boost. The MP3 compression was performed by a tool of Cool Edit Pro 2.0. The specification of MP3 was CBR(Constant Bit Rate) 128kbps, 44,100Hz, and stereo. The echo attack had the echo with initial volume 70%, decay 75%, and delay 100msec. The sub woofer boost attack was a modification attack of low frequency part in the Fourier coefficients. The test results showed the proposed algorithm is robust to the attacks. In the MP3 attack, the strength of the watermark information is not affected, and then the watermark can be detected from all of the sample audios. In the sub woofer boost attack, the watermark was detected when the strength is 0.3. Also, in the case of echo attack, the watermark can be identified if the strength is greater and equal than 0.5.

A Study on LRFD Reliability Based Design Criteria of RC Flexural Members (R.C. 휨부재(部材)의 L.R.F.D. 신뢰성(信賴性) 설계기준(設計基準)에 관한 연구(研究))

  • Cho, Hyo Nam
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.1 no.1
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    • pp.21-32
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    • 1981
  • Recent trends in design standards development in some European countries and U.S.A. have encouraged the use of probabilistic limit sate design concepts. Reliability based design criteria such as LSD, LRFD, PBLSD, adopted in those advanced countries have the potentials that they afford for symplifying the design process and placing it on a consistent reliability bases for various construction materials. A reliability based design criteria for RC flexural members are proposed in this study. Lind-Hasofer's invariant second-moment reliability theory is used in the derivation of an algorithmic reliability analysis method as well as an iterative determination of load and resistance factors. In addition, Cornell's Mean First-Order Second Moment Method is employed as a practical tool for the approximate reliability analysis and the derivation of design criteria. Uncertainty measures for flexural resistance and load effects are based on the Ellingwood's approach for the evaluation of uncertainties of loads and resistances. The implied relative safety levels of RC flexural members designed by the strength design provisions of the current standard code were evaluated using the second moment reliability analysis method proposed in this study. And then, resistance and load factors corresponding to the target reliability index(${\beta}=4$) which is considered to be appropriate level of reliability considering our practices are calculated by using the proposed methods. These reliability based factors were compared to those specified by our current ultimate strength design provisions. It was found that the reliability levels of flexural members designed by current code are not appropriate, and the code specified resistance and load factors were considerably different from the reliability based resistance and load factors proposed in this study.

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The Prediction of DEA based Efficiency Rating for Venture Business Using Multi-class SVM (다분류 SVM을 이용한 DEA기반 벤처기업 효율성등급 예측모형)

  • Park, Ji-Young;Hong, Tae-Ho
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.139-155
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    • 2009
  • For the last few decades, many studies have tried to explore and unveil venture companies' success factors and unique features in order to identify the sources of such companies' competitive advantages over their rivals. Such venture companies have shown tendency to give high returns for investors generally making the best use of information technology. For this reason, many venture companies are keen on attracting avid investors' attention. Investors generally make their investment decisions by carefully examining the evaluation criteria of the alternatives. To them, credit rating information provided by international rating agencies, such as Standard and Poor's, Moody's and Fitch is crucial source as to such pivotal concerns as companies stability, growth, and risk status. But these types of information are generated only for the companies issuing corporate bonds, not venture companies. Therefore, this study proposes a method for evaluating venture businesses by presenting our recent empirical results using financial data of Korean venture companies listed on KOSDAQ in Korea exchange. In addition, this paper used multi-class SVM for the prediction of DEA-based efficiency rating for venture businesses, which was derived from our proposed method. Our approach sheds light on ways to locate efficient companies generating high level of profits. Above all, in determining effective ways to evaluate a venture firm's efficiency, it is important to understand the major contributing factors of such efficiency. Therefore, this paper is constructed on the basis of following two ideas to classify which companies are more efficient venture companies: i) making DEA based multi-class rating for sample companies and ii) developing multi-class SVM-based efficiency prediction model for classifying all companies. First, the Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) is a non-parametric multiple input-output efficiency technique that measures the relative efficiency of decision making units(DMUs) using a linear programming based model. It is non-parametric because it requires no assumption on the shape or parameters of the underlying production function. DEA has been already widely applied for evaluating the relative efficiency of DMUs. Recently, a number of DEA based studies have evaluated the efficiency of various types of companies, such as internet companies and venture companies. It has been also applied to corporate credit ratings. In this study we utilized DEA for sorting venture companies by efficiency based ratings. The Support Vector Machine(SVM), on the other hand, is a popular technique for solving data classification problems. In this paper, we employed SVM to classify the efficiency ratings in IT venture companies according to the results of DEA. The SVM method was first developed by Vapnik (1995). As one of many machine learning techniques, SVM is based on a statistical theory. Thus far, the method has shown good performances especially in generalizing capacity in classification tasks, resulting in numerous applications in many areas of business, SVM is basically the algorithm that finds the maximum margin hyperplane, which is the maximum separation between classes. According to this method, support vectors are the closest to the maximum margin hyperplane. If it is impossible to classify, we can use the kernel function. In the case of nonlinear class boundaries, we can transform the inputs into a high-dimensional feature space, This is the original input space and is mapped into a high-dimensional dot-product space. Many studies applied SVM to the prediction of bankruptcy, the forecast a financial time series, and the problem of estimating credit rating, In this study we employed SVM for developing data mining-based efficiency prediction model. We used the Gaussian radial function as a kernel function of SVM. In multi-class SVM, we adopted one-against-one approach between binary classification method and two all-together methods, proposed by Weston and Watkins(1999) and Crammer and Singer(2000), respectively. In this research, we used corporate information of 154 companies listed on KOSDAQ market in Korea exchange. We obtained companies' financial information of 2005 from the KIS(Korea Information Service, Inc.). Using this data, we made multi-class rating with DEA efficiency and built multi-class prediction model based data mining. Among three manners of multi-classification, the hit ratio of the Weston and Watkins method is the best in the test data set. In multi classification problems as efficiency ratings of venture business, it is very useful for investors to know the class with errors, one class difference, when it is difficult to find out the accurate class in the actual market. So we presented accuracy results within 1-class errors, and the Weston and Watkins method showed 85.7% accuracy in our test samples. We conclude that the DEA based multi-class approach in venture business generates more information than the binary classification problem, notwithstanding its efficiency level. We believe this model can help investors in decision making as it provides a reliably tool to evaluate venture companies in the financial domain. For the future research, we perceive the need to enhance such areas as the variable selection process, the parameter selection of kernel function, the generalization, and the sample size of multi-class.

Development of Automated Region of Interest for the Evaluation of Renal Scintigraphy : Study on the Inter-operator Variability (신장 핵의학 영상의 정량적 분석을 위한 관심영역 자동설정 기능 개발 및 사용자별 분석결과의 변화도 감소효과 분석)

  • 이형구;송주영;서태석;최보영;신경섭
    • Progress in Medical Physics
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.41-50
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    • 2001
  • The quantification analysis of renal scintigraphy is strongly affected by the location, shape and size of region of interest(ROI). When ROIs are drawn manually, these ROIs are not reproducible due to the operators' subjective point of view, and may lead to inconsistent results even if the same data were analyzed. In this study, the effect of the ROI variation on the analysis of renal scintigraphy when the ROIs are drawn manually was investigated, and in order to obtain more consistent results, methods for automated ROI definition were developed and the results from the application of the developed methods were analyzed. Relative renal function, glomerular filtration rate and mean transit time were selected as clinical parameters for the analysis of the effect of ROI and the analysis tools were designed with the programming language of IDL5.2. To obtain renal scintigraphy, $^{99m}$Tc-DTPA was injected to the 11 adults of normal condition and to study the inter-operator variability, 9 researchers executed the analyses. The calculation of threshold using the gradient value of pixels and border tracing technique were used to define renal ROI and then the background ROI and aorta ROI were defined automatically considering anatomical information and pixel value. The automatic methods to define renal ROI were classified to 4 groups according to the exclusion of operator's subjectiveness. These automatic methods reduced the inter-operator variability remarkably in comparison with manual method and proved the effective tool to obtain reasonable and consistent results in analyzing the renal scintigraphy quantitatively.

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Limitations of National Responsibility and its Application on Marine Environmental Pollution beyond Borders -Focused on the Effects of China's Three Gorges Dam on the Marine Environment in the East China Sea- (국경을 넘는 해양환경오염에 대한 국가책임과 적용의 한계 -중국의 산샤댐 건설로 인한 동중국해 해양환경 영향을 중심으로-)

  • Yang, Hee Cheol
    • Ocean and Polar Research
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    • v.37 no.4
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    • pp.341-356
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    • 2015
  • A nation has a sovereign right to develop and use its natural resources according to its policies with regard to development and the relevant environment. A nation also has an obligation not to harm other countries or damage environments of neighboring countries as consequences of such actions of developments or use of natural resources. However, international precedents induce a nation to take additional actions not to cause more damages from the specific acts causing environmental damages beyond national borders, when such acts have economic and social importance. That is to say that there is a tendency to resolve such issues in a way to promote the balance between the mutual interests by allowing such actions to continue. A solution to China's Three Gorges Dam dilemma based on a soft law approach is more credible than relying on a good faith approach of national responsibilities and international legal proceedings since the construction and operation of the dam falls within the category of exercising national sovereign rights. If a large scale construction project such as the Three Gorges Dam or operation of a nuclear power plant causes or may cause environmental damage beyond the border of a nation engaged in such an undertaking, countries affected by this undertaking should jointly monitor the environmental effects in a spirit of cooperation rather than trying to stop the construction and should seek cooperative solutions of mutual understanding to establish measures to prevent further damages. If China's Three Gorges Dam construction and operation cause or contain the possibility of causing serious damages to marine environment, China cannot set aside its national responsibility to meet international obligations if China is aware of or knows about the damage that has occurred or may occur but fail to prevent, minimize, reverse or eliminate additional chances of such damages, or fails to put in place measures in order to prevent the recurrence of such damages. However, Korea must be able to prove a causal relationship between the relevant actions and resulting damages if it is to raise objections to the construction or request certain damage-prevention actions against crucial adverse effects on the marine environment out of respect for China's right to develop resources and acts of use thereof. Therefore, it is essential to cumulate continuous monitoring and evaluations information pertaining to marine environmental changes and impacts or responses of affected waters as well as acquisition of scientific baseline data with observed changes in such baseline. As China has adopted a somewhat nonchalant attitude toward taking adequate actions to protect against marine pollution risks or adverse effects caused by the construction and operation of China's Three Gorges Dam, there is a need to persuade China to adopt a more active stance and become involved in the monitoring and co-investigation of the Yellow Sea in order to protect the marine environment. Moreover, there is a need to build a regular environmental monitoring system that includes the evaluation of environmental effects beyond borders. The Espoo Convention can serve as a mechanism to ease potential conflicts of national interest in the Northeast Asian waters where political and historical sensitivities are acute. Especially, the recent diplomatic policy advanced by Korea and China can be implemented as an important example of gentle cooperation as the policy tool of choice is based on regional cooperation or cooperation between different regions.

Triple Detector SPECT Imaging with $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ in Adult Patients with Urinary Tract Infection (성인 요로 감염 환자에서 $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ 삼중검출기 SPECT 영상의 유용성)

  • Ryu Jin-Sook;Bae, Won-Gyu;Moon Dae-Hyuk;Lee, Myung-Hae;Kim, Soon-Bae,;Park, Su-Kil;Park, Jung-Sik;Hong, Chang-Gi D.;Cho, Kyung-Sik
    • The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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    • v.26 no.2
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    • pp.290-298
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    • 1992
  • Although early diagnosis of urinary tract infection is important, the radiologic evaluation is still controversial because of the low sensitivity and the lack of cost-effectiveness. This study was carried out to evaluate the clinical utility of high resolution triple head $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ SPECT imaging in urinary tract infection. We prospectively performed $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ planar and SPECT imaging, ultrasound of kidney (US), intravenous pyelography (IVP) and voiding cystourethrography (VCU) in all 60 adult patients with UTI [26 with first episode of acute pyelonephritis (APN), 22 with recurrent APN, and 12 persistent asymptomatic pyuria] and 25 normal persons. To assess reversibility of the renal cortical defect (RCD), $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ SPECT was repeated 1 to 8 months later in those patients with abnormal initial findings. Overall detection rate of $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ SPECT imaging was 83% (50/60), but planar, US, IVP and VCU showed abnormal findings in 68%, 28%, 32% and 13%, respectively. 25 out of 27 patients with normal or single RCD were all normal in other radioligic studies. Only two patients showed vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) on VCU (grade I) and mild hydronephrosis on IVP. But, high proportion of those with multiple RCD showed abnormal findings on US (17/33), IVP (18/33), and VCU (7/33): 67% in any of these 3 studies. Especially, 3 out 7 patients with VUR showed multiple RCD on $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ SPECT without any abnormality on IVP or US. 25 normal persons showed normal findings in all studies except one false positive finding on $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ SPECT imaging. Follow-up $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ SPECT was done in 28 patients (13 with single RCD, 15 with multiple RCD). All 13 patients with single RCD showed improvement. Those with multiple RCD presented improvement in 4, no change in 10, and aggravation in 1 on follow-up studies. With these results, we conclude: 1) $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ SPECT imaging is superior to planar imaging, US, IVP or VCU in detection of renal lesion in urinary tract infection. $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ SPECT is useful as a initial diagnostic tool in adult patients with urinary tract infection. 2) The multiple RCD on $^{99m}Tc-DMSA$ SPECT represent the high probability of irreversible tissue change and need of extensive urological work-up.

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