• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.7309-7314
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• 2013

Aim: To investigate factors that affect the place of death (POD) of terminal cancer patients. Materials and Methods: We recruited 702 consecutive patients (${\geq}18$ years) from 12 centers during July 2005 to October 2006, and 481 completed the questionnaire. In April 2011, we linked the data for 96.0% (n=462) of the deceased patients to the POD using the 2005-2009 death certificate data of Korea's National Statistical Office. The primary outcome variable was POD, and the predictive value of variables pertaining to patients and caregivers was evaluated using univariate and multivariate analyses. Results: Most patients died in a hospital (91.5%, n=441) and age, education, preference for place of terminal care, wish to use hospice/palliative care services, terminal cancer awareness, time between diagnosis and death, and global quality-of-life subscale of the EORTC QLQ-C30 of patients, and education and preference for place of terminal care of caregivers were significant predictors in univariate analyses. On multivariate analysis, patients and caregivers who preferred hospital/palliative care as the terminal care option over home care [adjusted odds ratio (aOR), 2.68; 95% confidential interval (CI), 1.18-7.04 and aOR: 2.65; 95%CI: 1.15-6.09 for patient and caregiver preferences, respectively] and caregivers who were highly educated (aOR, 3.19; 95%CI, 1.44-7.06) were predictors of POD. Conclusions: Most of the terminal cancer patients died in a hospital. Our findings indicate that major predictors of hospital deaths are preference of both the patient and caregiver for hospital/palliative care as the terminal care option and higher education of the caregiver.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.96-101
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• 1998

The prevalence of iron deficiency in later infancy and the toddler years(25% to 40% at 1 year of age) has not decreased remarkably , except in Western countries. The purpose of this study was to 1) determine the relationship between current feeding practices and iron status, and 2) assess compliance to infant feeding instructions. Two groupsof infants were examined. The first group of 302 infants aged 6 to 24months was seen at a well baby clinic while the second group of 135 infants of the same age group was assessed by venipuncture. Cutoff values for laboratory tests were as follows ; hemoglobin<11g/dL, mean corpuscular volume (MCV) <72fl ; red cell distribution width(RDW)>15% ; serum ferritin level<10ng/ml ; and transferrin saturation (serum iron(TIBC)<10%. The diagnosis of iron deficiency anemia (IDA) was made when a low hemoglobin level was associated with either low ferritin orlow transferrin saturation . Of the 302 children brought to the well baby clinic , 12.3%(n=37) were found to have anemia (hemoglobin<11.0/dL). In terms of children grouped according to feeding practices, it was found that children with anemial comprised 32.0% (24/75) of the prolonged breast-fed group (Group A), significantly more than the 4.0%(7/176) of the artificial milk feeding group(Group B). and 3.9%(2/51) of the switched from breast milk to iron -fortified weaning foods group(Group C).Among the 107 children with IDA , iron deficiency in 105 children(98.1%) was suggested by their dietary histories ; exclusive or prolonged breast-feeding for more than 6 months without iron fortification in 98 infants ; cow's milk consumption> 500ml/day without iron fortification during infancy(n=12), or >800ml without iron-fortified foods after infancy(n=15) ; and the use of unfortified forumula or unbalanced diets, mainly limited to rice gruel. Despite the relatively high (79.6%) motivation on the part of the infants mothers and supervison by professional personnel, the poor results in the infants receiving iron fortified foods were due to poor compliance(85.75). Among the mothers of 98 IDA patients who were contacted by telephone , it was revealed that 29% did not give the oral iron preparation for more than 2 months. Furthermore, negligence or disregard by the parents occurred in 14% of the case , discontinuance of the oral iron preparation by the parents due to side effects occurred in 6%, and the children's refusal or poor oral intake and no further trial occurred in 6%. The dietary history of a large group of infants was highly predictive of their risk for anemia . Continued consumption of breast milk until the age of 1 year is not warranted unless iron-fortified foods are given concomitantly. Because there is a problem with compliance, more successful and safe strategies for preventing iron deficiency woold included dual coverage in the from of therapeutic iron supplementation as well use of iron-fortified foods for teddlers who are at risk of iron deficiency.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.1044-1050
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• 2010

Endoscopic ultrasonography is a medical procedure in endoscopy combined with ultrasound to obtain images of the internal organs. It is useful to have a predictive pathological manifestation since a doctor can observe tumors under mucosa. However, it is often subjective to judge the degree of malignant degeneration of tumors. Thus, in this paper, we propose a feature analysis procedure to make the pathological manifestation more objective so as to improve the accuracy and recall of the diagnosis. In the process, we extract the ultrasound region from the image obtained by endoscopic ultrasonography. It is necessary to standardize the intensity of this region with the intensity of water region as a base since frequently found small intensity difference is only to be inefficient in the analysis. Then, we analyze the spot region with high echo and calcium deposited region by applying LVQ algorithm and bit plane partitioning procedure to tumor regions selected by medical expert. For detailed analysis, features such as intensity value, intensity information included within two random points chosen by medical expert in tumor region, and the slant of outline of tumor region in order to decide the degree of malignant degeneration. Such procedure is proven to be helpful for medical experts in tumor analysis.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.390-397
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• 2009

Endoscopic ultrasonography is a medical procedure in endoscopy combined with ultrasound to obtain images of the internal organs. It is useful to have a predictive pathological manifestation since a doctor can observe tumors under mucosa. However, it is often subjective to judge the degree of malignant degeneration of tumors. Thus, in this paper, we propose a feature analysis procedure to make the pathological manifestation more objective so as to improve the accuracy and recall of the diagnosis. In the process, we extract the ultrasound region from the image obtained by endoscopic ultrasonography. It is necessary to standardize the intensity of this region with the intensity of water region as a base since frequently found small intensity difference is only to be inefficient in the analysis. Then, we analyze the spot region with high echo and calcium deposited region by applying LVQ algorithm and bit plane partitioning procedure to tumor regions selected by medical expert. For detailed analysis, features such as intensity value, intensity information included within two random points chosen by medical expert in tumor region, and the slant of outline of tumor region in order to decide the degree of malignant degeneration. Such procedure is proven to be helpful for medical experts in tumor analysis.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.23-35
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• 2013

This paper proposes an effective technique that is used to automatically extract feature vectors from vibration signals for fault classification systems. Conventional mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) are sensitive to noise of vibration signals, degrading classification accuracy. To solve this problem, this paper proposes spectral envelope cepstral coefficients (SECC) analysis, where a 4-step filter bank based on spectral envelopes of vibration signals is used: (1) a linear predictive coding (LPC) algorithm is used to specify spectral envelopes of all faulty vibration signals, (2) all envelopes are averaged to get general spectral shape, (3) a gradient descent method is used to find extremes of the average envelope and its frequencies, (4) a non-overlapped filter is used to have centers calculated from distances between valley frequencies of the envelope. This 4-step filter bank is then used in cepstral coefficients computation to extract feature vectors. Finally, a multi-layer support vector machine (MLSVM) with various sigma values uses these special parameters to identify faulty types of induction motors. Experimental results indicate that the proposed extraction method outperforms other feature extraction algorithms, yielding more than about 99.65% of classification accuracy.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.76 no.1
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• pp.23-29
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• 2014

Background: Interferon-${\gamma}$ assays based on tuberculosis (TB)-specific antigens have been utilized for diagnosing and ruling out latent TB and active TB, but their utility is still limited for TB incidence countries. The aim of this study is to understand the clinical utility of enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISpot) assays among patients with clinically suspected TB and healthy adults in clinical practices and community-based settings. Methods: The ELISpot assays (T SPOT.TB, Oxford Immunotec, UK) were prospectively performed in 202 patients. After excluding those with indeterminate results, 196 were included for analysis: 41 were TB patients, 93 were non-TB patients, and 62 were healthy adults. Results: The sensitivity and negative predictive values of the T SPOT.TB assays for the diagnosis of TB were 87.8% and 89.1%, respectively, among patients with suspected TB. The agreement between the tuberculin skin test (10-mm cutoff) and the T SPOT.TB assay was 66.1% (kappa=0.335) in all participants and 80.0% (kappa=0.412) in TB patients. Among those without TB (n=155), a past history of TB and fibrotic TB scar on chest X-rays were significant factors that yielded positive T SPOT.TB results. There was a significant difference in the magnitude of T SPOT.TB spot counts between TB patients and non-TB patients or healthy adults. Conclusion: The T SPOT.TB assay appeared to be a useful test for the diagnostic exclusion of TB. A positive result, however, should be cautiously interpreted for potential positives among those without active TB in intermediate TB incidence areas.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1347-1350
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• 2016

Background: Breast cancer prognosis is influenced by several histopathology and clinical factors including expression of Ki67 which may have a predictive role in lymph node negative breast cancer patients. The aim of this study was to assess Ki67 expression in breast cancers without axillary lymph node involvement and to evaluate its prognostic value with regard to disease-free survival. Materials and Methods: Subjects were selected from non-metastatic invasive breast cancer patients who were referred to the oncology department of Ghaem hospital during 1 April 2001 to 1 April 2008. Ki67 levels were measured using immunohistochemistry (IHC) and compared with clinicopathological features. The relation of Ki67 expression with disease-free survival was also analysed. Results: A total of 106 women with a mean age of 49 were examined. Some 94.3% were classified as having invasive ductal carcinomas and the mean tumour diameter at the time of diagnosis was 2.8 cm. Some 50.9% of cases were ER positive and 47.2% were PR positive. P53 expression was positive in 48.1% of the cases. According to the IHC results, only 8.5% of the patients were Her2/neu positive. Ki67 was positive in 66 (62.3%) with a significant relation to lower age (p=0.0229) and P53 positivity (p=0.005). After an average of 40-months follow up, 13 (12.3%) demonstrated recurrence, most commonly systemic. Of 13 cases with relapse, 10 patients (77%) were Ki67 positive. Conclusions: In our population Ki67 appeared to be an independent prognostic factor for three-year survival. However, we stress that a survival study with a bigger sample size would help to support this conclusion.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.111-121
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• 2018

Many problems in rotating machinery such as aircraft engines, wind turbines and motors are caused by bearing defects. The abnormalities of the bearing can be detected by analyzing signal data such as vibration or noise, proper pre-processing through a few signal processing techniques is required to analyze their frequencies. In this paper, we introduce the condition monitoring method for diagnosing the failure of the rotating machines by analyzing the vibration signal of the bearing. From the collected signal data, the normal states are trained, and then normal or abnormal state data are classified based on the trained normal state. For preprocessing, a Hamming window is applied to eliminate leakage generated in this process, and the cepstrum analysis is performed to obtain the original signal of the signal data, called the formant. From the vibration data of the IMS bearing dataset, we have extracted 6 statistic indicators using the cepstral coefficients and showed that the application of the Mahalanobis distance classifier can monitor the bearing status and detect the failure in advance.

• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.57-66
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• 2002

Objective : This study was designed to investigate the interrelationship and clinical usefulness of sperm morphology by strict criteria (SM), acrosome reaction following ionophore challenge test (ARIC) and sperm penetration assay (SPA) using zona-free hamster ova as prognostic factors in in vitro fertilization. Materials and Methods: Semen samples were provided by 83 patients undergoing IVF. We first evaluated the differences between normal fertilization group and poor fertilization group on three andrologic tests. Secondly, we analyzed the relationship between the three andrologic tests and in vitro fertilization on IVF settings. Finally, we evaluated the effectiveness of the three andrologic tests as the prognostic indicators for fertilizing ability. Results: The fertilization rate of all men in the poor fertilization group was less than 30%; but there was no evidence that this poor fertilization was due to oocyte defects. The results of three andrologic tests were significatly higher in normal fertilization group. Fertilization rate (%) in vitro was highly correlated (p<0.001) with % normal sperm by SM, ARIC value (%), and SPA result. By using Receiver-Operator-Characteristic curve (ROC), we evaluated the effectiveness of these three tests. The sensitivity and specificity of SM, ARIC test and SPA in predicting fertilization potential in IVF setting were 76% and 75%, 84% and 90%, and 76% and 95%, respectively. Conclusion: Our data suggest that the three andrologic tests can be reliable tools as prognostic factors of sperm fertilizing ability. Among these test, ARIC test and SPA gave more accurate information on fertilizing capacity. ARIC test was shown to have a predictive value for fertilizing ability comparable to that of SPA that appears to be a simple and cost-effective addition to current andrology laboratory. Combined application of these three tests may give more information on predicting sperm fertilizing capacity.

• Archives of Craniofacial Surgery
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.288-293
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• 2020

Background: Pilomatrixoma is a benign tumor that originates from the hair follicle matrix. It usually presents as a hard, slow growing, solitary mass that can be easily misdiagnosed as other skin masses. The aim of this study was to clinically analyze a case series of pilomatrixoma in pediatric patients from Korea. Methods: A total of 165 pediatric patients from 2011 to 2018 with a histological diagnosis of pilomatrixoma were included. A retrospective review was performed using the electronic medical records, including patient demographics, number and location of the mass, clinical and imaging presentation, and postoperative outcomes. Results: There were 61 male and 104 female patients with 152 solitary and 13 multiple pilomatrixomas. Among solitary pilomatrixomas, the lesion commonly occurred in the head and neck (84.2%), followed by upper limbs (11.2%), lower limbs (3.3%), and trunk (1.3%). The pilomatrixoma lesion presented as the following types based on our clinical classification: mass (56.02%), pigmentation (25.31%), mixed (12.65%), ulceration (4.82%), and keloid-like (1.2%). Ultrasonography showed a high positive predictive value (95.56%). There were no specific complications observed except for two cases of recurrence. Conclusion: Pilomatrixoma has various clinical feature presentations and commonly occurs in the head and neck. Ultrasonography is a helpful diagnostic tool. Surgical removal of the lesion is the main treatment method with a low recurrence rate.