• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.161-168
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• 2008

We propose a novel bistable nematic liquid crystal cell, which has a dual-frequency liquid crystal material and pixel-isolating polymer wall formed by an anisotropic phase separation of a mixture of liquid crystals and UV-curable pre-polymers. The proposed cell has two stable states of left- and right-handed ${\pi}$-twist. The switching between the two states is achieved by using a sequential waveform of low and high frequencies. A transmissive bistable liquid crystal display is designed, which achieves high contrast ratio by using the proposed cell and optical films.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Industrial Systems Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.239-250
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• 2003

In this research, we propose a hybrid group decision support mechanism (H-GDSM) based on Fuzzy AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) and FCM (Fuzzy Cognitive Map). The AHP elicits a corresponding priority vector interpreting the preferred information among the decision makers. Corresponding vector was composed of the pairwise comparison values of a set of objects. Since pairwise comparison values are the judgments obtained from an appropriate semantic scale. However, AHP couldn't represent the causal relationship among information, which were used by decision makers. In contrast to AHP, FCM could represent the causal relationship among variables or information. Therefore, FCMs were successfully developed and used in several ill-structured domains, such as strategic decision-making, policy making, and simulations. Nonetheless, many researchers used subjective and voluntary inputs to simulate the FCM. As a result of subjective inputs, it couldn't avoid the rebukes of businessman. To overcome these limitations, we incorporated the Fuzzy membership functions, AHP and FCM into a H-GDSM. In contrast to current AHP methods and FCMs, the H-GDSM method developed herein could concurrently tackle the pairwise comparison involving causal relationships under a group decision-making environment. The strengths and contributions of our mechanism were 1) handling of qualitative knowledge and causal relationships, 2) extraction of objective input value to simulate the FCM, 3) multi-phase group decision support based on H-GDSM. To validate our proposed mechanism we developed a simple prototype system to support negotiation-based decisions in electronic commerce (EC).

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.149-156
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• 2016

Measurement of cardiac blood flow using the magnetic resonance imaging has been limited due to breathing and involuntary movements of the heart. The present study attempted to improve the accuracy of cardiac blood flow testing through phase contrast magnetic resonance imaging by presenting the adequate breathing method and imaging variables by comparing the measurement values of cardiac blood flow. Each was evaluated by comparing the breath hold retrospective 1NEX and non breath hold retrospective 1-3NEX in the ascending aorta and descending aorta. As a result, the average blood flow amount/velocity of the breath hold retrosepctive 1NEX method in the ascending aorta were $96.17{\pm}19.12ml/sec$, $17.04{\pm}4.12cm/sec$ respectively, which demonstrates a statistically significant difference(p<0.05) with the non-breath hold retrospective method 1NEX of $72.31{\pm}13.27ml$ and $12.32{\pm}3.85$. On the other hand, the average 2NEX blood flow and mean flow velocity is $101.90{\pm}24.09$, $16.84{\pm}4.32$, 3NEX $103.06{\pm}25.49$, $16.88{\pm}4.19$ did not show statistically significant differences(p>0.05).The average blood flow amount/ velocity of the breath hold retrospective 1NEX method in the descending aorta were $76.68{\pm}19.72ml/s$, and $22.23{\pm}4.8$, which did not demonstrate a significant difference in comparison to non-breath hold retrospective method 1-3 NEX. Therefore, the non breath hold retrospective method does not significantly differ in terms of cardiac blood flow in comparison with the breath hold retrospective method in accordance with the increase of NEX, so pediatric patients or patients who are not able to breathe well must have the diagnostic value of their cardiac blood flow tests improved.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.314-322
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• 2014

Purpose: Diastolic dysfunction is a common problem in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). The purpose of this study was to assess the role of MRI in the assessment of diastolic function using mitral valve and pulmonary vein flow velocities in HCM patients. Methods and Results: Phase-contrast MRI (mitral valve and pulmonary vein) and transthoracic echocardiography was successfully performed for 59 HCM patients (44 men and 15 women; mean age, 51 years). Forty-nine patients had a diastolic dysfunction; grade 1 (n = 20), grade 2 (n = 27), and grade 3 (n = 2) using echocardiography, and ten patients had normal diastolic function. The transmitral inflow parameters (E, A, and E/A ratios) obtained by MRI showed positive correlation with the same parameters measured by echocardiography (Pearson's r values were 0.47, 0.60, and 0.75 for E, A, E/A, respectively, all P < 0.001). With the flow information of the pulmonary vein from cardiac MRI, pseudo-normalized pattern (n = 8) could be distinguished from true normal filling pattern (n = 17), and the diastolic function grades by cardiac MRI showed moderate agreement with those of echocardiography (kappa value = 0.45, P < 0.001). Conclusions: Assessment of left ventricle diastolic function is feasible using phase-contrast MRI in HCM patients. Analysis of pulmonary vein flow velocity on MRI is useful for differentiating pseudo-normal from normal diastolic function in HCM patients.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.142-147
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• 1997

Purpose: To compare the effectiveness of the in-phase (IP) sequence and the opposed-phase (Op) sequence in the detection of focal hepatic lesions in the single breath-hold hepatic MR imaging with fast gradient T1-weighted pulse sequences. Materials and Methods: IP and OP T1-weighted breath-hold imaging was performed using fast gradient echo sequences in 45 patients referred for known focal hepatic lesions, in which 78 lesions were detected. Three blind readers independently reviewed the images for lesion detectability. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the liver, the lesion-to-liver contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and the liver-to-spleen CNR were also compared. A consensus was reached by three readers to determine which sequence is better in image quality. Results: On OP images, 61(78%), 61(78%), and 63(89%) lesions were correctly identified for reader 1, 2 and 3, respectively. On IP images, 66(85%), 65(83%), and 65(93%) lesions were detected for each reader, respectively. When two image sets were combined, 71(91 %), 69(88 %), and 76(97%) lesions respectively were detected for each reader. In cases of hepatocellular carcinoma, liver-to-Iesion CNR was greater on the OP images(p (0.05), but in other lesions significant difference was not demonstrated. Liver-to-spleen CNR was higher on OP images(p ( 0.1), but the SNR of the liver was higher on the IP images. Conclusion: Use of both IP and OP imaging can be helpful to avoid erroneous missing of some focal hepatic lesions.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.22-29
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• 2011

Although reactive oxygen species (ROS) are inevitable by-products of many redox reactions in eukaryotic cells, they play a crucial role as signaling molecules in many cellular processes for development and defense response to abiotic stresses. The biphasic ROS production which was peaked twice in a first transient phase and a second massive phase was occurred after treatment of abiotic stress such as oxidative stress, high salinity. This biphasic generation of ROS was followed by the biphasic production of stress hormone, ethylene. The mechanism of interactions between ROS and ethylene biosynthesis is studied in tobacco (Nicotiana tabaccum L.) plants under the abiotic stresses. The stress-induced ethylene production was significantly inhibited in RbohD-AS and RbohF-AS, in which antisense expression of NADPH oxidase genes was performed. The accumulation of ROS, which was determined by DAB and DCFH-DA staining, was significantly decreased after abiotic stresses in transgenic plants. The suppression of signaling with ethylene and ROS induced more tolerance in response to abiotic stress. The transgenic plants were more tolerant in MS medium supplemented with salinity stress in contrast with wild-type. Stress-induced cell damage determined by DNA fragmentation was decreased at phase II in those transgenic plants. Therefore, the first burst of ROS is more responsible for making a role as a signaling molecule during stress-induced response. These results suggested that ethylene and ROS act in a positive feedback cycle that results in mutual enhancement of ethylene and ROS production during stress-induced cell death.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.101-110
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• 2015

Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR) is affected by various noise source such as atmospheric artifact, orbital error, processing noise etc.. Especially, one of the dominant noise source for long-wave SAR system, such as ALOS PALSAR (L-band SAR satellite) is the ionosphere effect because phase delays on radar pulse through the ionosphere are proportional to the radar wavelength. To avoid misinterpret of phase signal in the interferogram, it is necessary to detect and correct ionospheric errors. Recently, a MAI (Multipler Aperture SAR Interferometry) based ionospheric correction method has been proposed and considered one of the effective method to reduce phase errors by ionospheric effect. In this paper, we introduce the MAI-based method for ionospheric correction. Moreover we propose an efficient method that apply the method over non-coherent area using directional filter. Finally, we apply the proposed method to the ALOS PALSAR pairs, which include the west sea coast region in Korea. A polynomial fitting method, which is frequently adopted in InSAR processing, has been applied for the mitigation of phase distortion by the orbital error. However, the interferogram still has low frequency of Sin pattern along the azimuth direction. In contrast, after we applied the proposed method for ionospheric correction, the low frequency pattern is mitigated and the profile results has stable phase variation values within ${\pm}1rad$. Our results show that this method provides a promising way to correct orbital and ionospheric artifact and would be important technique to improve the accuracy and the availability for L-band or P-band systems.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.297-306
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• 2009

A homologous series of side chain liquid crystalline polymers, poly [1-{4-(4'-cyanophenylazo)phenoxyalkyloxy}ethylene]s(CAPETn, where n, the number of methylene units in the spacer, is $2{\sim}10$) were synthesized from poly(vinyl alcohol) and 1-{4-(4'-cyanophenylazo)phenoxy}alkylbromides(CAPBn, n=$2{\sim}10$), and their thermotropic liquid crystalline phase behaviors were investigated. The CAPBn with n of $2{\sim}5$ did not show any liquid crystalline behavior, while those with n of 6 and $7{\sim}10$ showed enantiotropic and monotropic nematic phases, respectively. In contrast, among the CAPETn polymers, only CAPET5 exhibited an enantiotropic nematic phase, while other polymers showed monotropic nematic phases. The isotropic-nematic transition temperatures of CAPETns and their entropy variation at the phase transition that were higher values than those of CAPBns, demonstrated a typical odd-even effect as a function of n. These phase transition behaviors were disscussed in terms of the 'virtual trimer model' by Imrie. The mesophase properties of CAPETns were largely different from those reported for the polymers in which the (cyanophenylazo) phenoxy groups are attached to polyacrylate, polymethacrylate, and polystyrene backbones through polymethylene spacers. The results indicate that the mode of chemical linkage of the side group with the main chain plays an important role in the formation, stabilization, and type of mesophase.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.1399-1408
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• 1999

Geometrical structures for the dimerization of (NO)₂ from (NO + NO) have been calculated using ab initio Har-tree-Fock (SCF), second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation (MP2), and coupled cluster with the single, double, and triple substitution [CCSD(T)] methods with a triple zeta plus polarization (TZP) basis set including diffuse Rydberg basis functions. The structure of (NO)₂ can be described by two interactions (N…N, N…O). One is the ONNO structure with an (N…N) interaction. In this structure, acyclic cis-ONNO with $C_{2v}$-symmetry, acyclic trans-ONNO with $C_{2h}$, and cyclic ONNO with trapezoidal structure ($C_{2v}$) are optimized at the MP2 level. The other structure is the ONON structure with an (N…O) interaction. In the structure, acyclic cis-ONON with Cs$^{-symmetry}$ and cyclic ONON of the rectangular ($C_{2h}$), square $(D_{2h})$, rhombic $(D_{2h})$, and parallelogramic $(D_{2h})$ geometries are also optimized. It is found that acyclic cis-ONNO (¹A₁) is the most stable structure and cyclic ONNO (³A₁) is the least stable. Acyclic trans-ONNO (³A₁) with an (N…N) interaction, acyclic trans-ONON and bicyclic ONON $(C_{2v})$ with (N…O) interaction, and acyclic cis- and trans-NOON with an (O…O) interaction can not be optimized at the MP2 level. Particularly, acyclic trans-ONNO with $C_{2h}$-symmetry can not be optimized at the CCSD(T) level. Meanwhile, acyclic NNOO (¹A₁, $C_s)$ and trianglic NNOO (¹A₁,$C_{2v})$ formed by the (O…N) interaction between O₂ and N₂ are optimized at the MP2 level. The binding energies and the relative energy gaps among the isomers are found to be relatively small./sec. Spiral CT scans during the arterial phase were obtained 35 seconds after the injection of contrast medium. CT findings of 78 lesions less than 4cm in diameter were correlated with angiographic findings. Results : The attenuation of lesions was high(n = 69), iso(n = 5), and low(n = 4) compared with liver parenchyma during the arterial phase of spiral CT. In lesions with high-, iso-, and low-attenuation during the arterial phase of spiral CT, hypervascularity on angiograms was found in 63 of 69(91.3%), three of five(60%), and three of four lesions(75%), respectively. Six lesions with high-attenuation on the arterial phase of spiral CT were not seen on angiography. Two iso-attenuated and one low-attenuated lesion were hypovascular on angiograms. Conclusion : The results of this study suggest that with some exceptions there was good correlation between the arterial phase of spiral CT and angiography.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.384-394
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• 2024

Objective: To evaluate the image quality of novel dark-blood computed tomography angiography (CTA) imaging combined with deep learning reconstruction (DLR) compared to delayed-phase CTA images with hybrid iterative reconstruction (HIR), to visualize the cervical artery wall in patients with Takayasu arteritis (TAK). Materials and Methods: This prospective study continuously recruited 53 patients with TAK (mean age: 33.8 ± 10.2 years; 49 females) between January and July 2022 who underwent head-neck CTA scans. The arterial- and delayed-phase images were reconstructed using HIR and DLR. Subtracted images of the arterial-phase from the delayed-phase were then added to the original delayed-phase using a denoising filter to generate the final-dark-blood images. Qualitative image quality scores and quantitative parameters were obtained and compared among the three groups of images: Delayed-HIR, Dark-blood-HIR, and Dark-blood-DLR. Results: Compared to Delayed-HIR, Dark-blood-HIR images demonstrated higher qualitative scores in terms of vascular wall visualization and diagnostic confidence index (all P < 0.001). These qualitative scores further improved after applying DLR (Dark-blood-DLR compared to Dark-blood-HIR, all P < 0.001). Dark-blood DLR also showed higher scores for overall image noise than Dark-blood-HIR (P < 0.001). In the quantitative analysis, the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) values between the vessel wall and lumen for the bilateral common carotid arteries and brachiocephalic trunk were significantly higher on Dark-blood-HIR images than on Delayed-HIR images (all P < 0.05). The CNR values were significantly higher for Dark-blood-DLR than for Dark-blood-HIR in all cervical arteries (all P < 0.001). Conclusion: Compared with Delayed-HIR CTA, the dark-blood method combined with DLR improved CTA image quality and enhanced visualization of the cervical artery wall in patients with TAK.