• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.130-140
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• 1999

Objectives: This study was carried out to estimate the magnitude of skin disease related to occupation and to find out the characteristics of it. Methods: We collected and analyzed the cases of occupational skin disease reported by surveillance system composed of doctors and nurses in 150 enterprises with dispensary or attacked hospital and physicians in 92 specific health examination institutes and 150 dermatologists from May to November, 1998. Results: Among members of surveillance system, 66 enterprises and 47 specific health examination institutes and 55 dermatologists reported 571 cases of occupational skin disease in 512 workers. Excepting 81 cases reported by dermatologists, We analyzed 490 cases reported by enterprises and specific health examination institutes. Among 490 cases, contact dermatitis was most common(368 cases, 75.1%) and the second was hyper or hypopigmentation(36 cases, 7.3%). When we analyzed the characteristics of workers with occupational contact dermatitis, male workers were 281 (79.2%) and female were 74(20.8%). 165 workers(64.5%) had chronic skin disease with repeated cure and relapse. 245 workers(72.5%) answered positively that their coworkers had similar skin disease. 27 workers(8.7%) experienced absence due to contact dermatitis related to occupation. To analyze the type of industries of workers with occupational contact dermatitis, automobile and trailer manufacturing industry was most common(105 cases, 29.6%) and the second was manufacturing industry for image, sound and communication equipment(55 cases, 15.5%). Organic solvent(183 cases, 46.7%) was the most common treating material of workers with contact dermatitis and the second was various kinds of chemicals(59cases, 15.1%). Conclusions: This is the first study using nationwide surveillance system to collect data of occupational skin disease. We found that many workers had skin disease related to occupation and characteristics of occupational skin disease were chronic and clustering. Therefore, we had to establish counterplan to manage occupational skin disease and to operate surveillance system to identify trends of occupational skin disease, continuously.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.1501-1514
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• 2008

The face shape extracted by the depth values has different appearance as the most important facial information. The face images decomposed into frequency subband are signified personal features in detail. In this paper, we develop a method for recognizing the range face images by multiple frequency domains for each depth image using the modified fuzzy c-mean algorithm. For the proposed approach, the first step tries to find the nose tip that has a protrusion shape on the face from the extracted face area. And the second step takes into consideration of the orientated frontal posture to normalize. Multiple contour line areas which have a different shape for each person are extracted by the depth threshold values from the reference point, nose tip. And then, the frequency component extracted from the wavelet subband can be adopted as feature information for the authentication problems. The third step of approach concerns the application of eigenface to reduce the dimension. And the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) method to improve the classification ability between the similar features is adapted. In the last step, the individual classifiers using the modified fuzzy c-mean method based on the K-NN to initialize the membership degree is explained for extracted coefficient at each resolution level. In the experimental results, using the depth threshold value 60 (DT60) showed the highest recognition rate among the extracted regions, and the proposed classification method achieved 98.3% recognition rate, incase of fuzzy cluster.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.323-328
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• 2004

The development of group-specific tissue probability maps (TPM) provides a priori knowledge for better result of cerebral tissue classification with regard to the inter-ethnic differences of inter-subject variability. We present sequential procedures of group-specific TPM and evaluate the age effects in the structural differences of TPM. We investigated 100 healthy volunteers with high resolution MRI scalming. The subjects were classified into young (60, 25.92+4.58) and old groups (40, 58.83${\pm}$8.10) according to the age. To avoid any bias from random selected single subject and improve registration robustness, average atlas as target for TPM was constructed from skull-stripped whole data using linear and nonlinear registration of AIR. Each subject was segmented into binary images of gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid using fuzzy clustering and normalized into the space of average atlas. The probability images were the means of these binary images, and contained values in the range of zero to one. A TPM of a given tissue is a spatial probability distribution representing a certain subject population. In the spatial distribution of tissue probability according to the threshold of probability, the old group exhibited enlarged ventricles and overall GM atrophy as age-specific changes, compared to the young group. Our results are generally consistent with the few published studies on age differences in the brain morphology. The more similar the morphology of the subject is to the average of the population represented by the TPM, the better the entire classification procedure should work. Therefore, we suggest that group-specific TPM should be used as a priori information for the cerebral tissue classification.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.105-115
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• 2019

Brain tumor surgery may be difficult, but it is also incredibly important. The technological improvements for traditional brain tumor surgeries have always been a focus to improve the precision of surgery and release the potential of the technology in this important area of the body. The need for precision during brain tumor surgery has led to an increase in Robotic-assisted surgeries (RAS). One of the challenges to the widespread acceptance of RAS in the neurosurgery is to recognize invisible tumor accurately. Therefore, it is important to detect brain tumor size and location because surgeon tries to remove as much tumor as possible. In this paper, we proposed brain tumor detection procedures for MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) system. A method of automatic brain tumor detection is needed to accurately target the location of the lesion during brain tumor surgery and to report the location and size of the lesion. In the qualitative assessment, the proposed method showed better results than those obtained with other brain tumor detection methods. Comparisons among all assessment criteria indicated that the proposed method was significantly superior to the threshold method with respect to all assessment criteria. The proposed method was effective for detecting brain tumor.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.137-147
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• 2022

Diagnosis and management of skin condition is a very basic and important function in performing its role for workers in the beauty industry and cosmetics industry. For accurate skin condition diagnosis and management, it is necessary to understand the skin condition and needs of customers. In this paper, we developed SCIS, a big data-based skin care information system that supports skin condition diagnosis and management using social media big data for skin condition diagnosis and management. By using the developed system, it is possible to analyze and extract core information for skin condition diagnosis and management based on text information. The skin care information system SCIS developed in this paper consists of big data collection stage, text preprocessing stage, image preprocessing stage, and text word analysis stage. SCIS collected big data necessary for skin diagnosis and management, and extracted key words and topics from text information through simple frequency analysis, relative frequency analysis, co-occurrence analysis, and correlation analysis of key words. In addition, by analyzing the extracted key words and information and performing various visualization processes such as scatter plot, NetworkX, t-SNE, and clustering, it can be used efficiently in diagnosing and managing skin conditions.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.129-138
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• 2022

In the context of the increasing applications of voice assistants in vehicles, we focused on the association between the visual appeal of the cars and the acoustic characteristics of the voice assistants. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between the visual appeal of the vehicle and the voice assistant based on their emotional characteristics. A total of 15 adjectives were used to assess the emotional characteristics of 12 types of cars and six types of voices. An online interview was carried out, instructing participants to match three adjectives with the presented car images or voices. This was followed with a brief interview to allow the participants to reflect on the adjective matches. Based on the assessments, we performed principal component analysis (PCA) to determine factors. We aimed to deploy the cars and voices and analyze the patterns of clustering. The PCA analysis revealed two factors profiled as "Light-Heavy" and "Comfortable-Radical." Both car and voice stimuli were deployed in a two-dimensional space showing the internal relationship within and between the two substances. Based on the coordination data, a hierarchical cluster grouped the 18 stimuli into four groups labeled as challenge, elegance, majesty, and vigor. This study identified two latent factors describing the emotional characteristics of both car images and voice types clustered into four groups based on their emotional characteristics. The coherent matches between car style and voice type are expected to address the design concept more successfully.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.139-152
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• 2011

Recommender systems have become an important research field since the emergence of the first paper on collaborative filtering in the mid-1990s. In general, recommender systems are defined as the supporting systems which help users to find information, products, or services (such as books, movies, music, digital products, web sites, and TV programs) by aggregating and analyzing suggestions from other users, which mean reviews from various authorities, and user attributes. However, as academic researches on recommender systems have increased significantly over the last ten years, more researches are required to be applicable in the real world situation. Because research field on recommender systems is still wide and less mature than other research fields. Accordingly, the existing articles on recommender systems need to be reviewed toward the next generation of recommender systems. However, it would be not easy to confine the recommender system researches to specific disciplines, considering the nature of the recommender system researches. So, we reviewed all articles on recommender systems from 37 journals which were published from 2001 to 2010. The 37 journals are selected from top 125 journals of the MIS Journal Rankings. Also, the literature search was based on the descriptors "Recommender system", "Recommendation system", "Personalization system", "Collaborative filtering" and "Contents filtering". The full text of each article was reviewed to eliminate the article that was not actually related to recommender systems. Many of articles were excluded because the articles such as Conference papers, master's and doctoral dissertations, textbook, unpublished working papers, non-English publication papers and news were unfit for our research. We classified articles by year of publication, journals, recommendation fields, and data mining techniques. The recommendation fields and data mining techniques of 187 articles are reviewed and classified into eight recommendation fields (book, document, image, movie, music, shopping, TV program, and others) and eight data mining techniques (association rule, clustering, decision tree, k-nearest neighbor, link analysis, neural network, regression, and other heuristic methods). The results represented in this paper have several significant implications. First, based on previous publication rates, the interest in the recommender system related research will grow significantly in the future. Second, 49 articles are related to movie recommendation whereas image and TV program recommendation are identified in only 6 articles. This result has been caused by the easy use of MovieLens data set. So, it is necessary to prepare data set of other fields. Third, recently social network analysis has been used in the various applications. However studies on recommender systems using social network analysis are deficient. Henceforth, we expect that new recommendation approaches using social network analysis will be developed in the recommender systems. So, it will be an interesting and further research area to evaluate the recommendation system researches using social method analysis. This result provides trend of recommender system researches by examining the published literature, and provides practitioners and researchers with insight and future direction on recommender systems. We hope that this research helps anyone who is interested in recommender systems research to gain insight for future research.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.5_1
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• pp.469-480
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• 2017

This study aims to understand the relationship between lineaments and epicenters in Geochang region, Gyungsangnam-do, South Korea. An instrumental observation of earthquakes has been started by Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) since 1978 and there were 6 earthquakes with magnitude ranging 2 to 2.5 in Geochang region from 1978 to 2016. Lineaments were extracted from LANDSAT 8 satellite image and shaded relief map displayed in 3-dimension using Digital Elevation Model (DEM). Then, lineament density was statistically examined by hotspot analysis. Hexagonal grids were generated to perform the analysis because hexagonal pattern expresses lineaments with less discontinuity than square girds, and the size of the grid was selected to minimize a variance of lineament density. Since hotspot analysis measures the extent of clustering with Z score, Z scores computed with lineaments' frequency ($L_f$), length ($L_d$), and intersection ($L_t$) were used to find lineament clusters in the density map. Furthermore, the Z scores were extracted from the epicenters and examined to see the relevance of each density elements to epicenters. As a result, 15 among 18 densities,recorded as 3 elements in 6 epicenters, were higher than 1.65 which is 95% of the standard normal distribution. This indicates that epicenters coincide with high density area. Especially, $L_f$ and $L_t$ had a significant relationship with epicenter, being located in upper 95% of the standard normal distribution, except for one epicenter in $L_t$. This study can be used to identify potential seismic zones by improving the accuracy of expressing lineaments' spatial distribution and analyzing relationship between lineament density and epicenter. However, additional studies in wider study area with more epicenters are recommended to promote the results.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.61-118
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• 2008

The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.