• Korean Journal of Oriental Medicine
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.135-140
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• 2010

The usefulness of constitutional diagnoses based on skin measurements has been established in oriental medicine. According to Sasang constitutional medicine, humans can be distinguished based on properties of skin's friction, thickness and elasticity. To quantify and standardize skin diagnosis, the present study designed an equipment for measuring skin elasticity of hand. But there were some noises in measuring skin elasticity such as measurement method, environment, operator and conditions of patient. So we considered a six sigma project for reducing the measurement errors. The project was followed to discipline process of five macro phases: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control(DMAIC). So, we could find the major factors which should be controled for stabilizing measurement system and we revised the SOP(Standard Operating Procedure) of the skin elasticity measurement.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.53-67
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• 2011

Human state in human-machine systems highly affects the overall system performance, and should be detected and monitored. Physiological cues are essential indicators of human state and useful for the purpose of monitoring. The study presented in this paper was focused on developing a bio-inspired sensing system, i.e., Nano-Skin, to non-intrusively measure physiological cues on human-machine contact surfaces to detect human state. The paper is presented in three parts. The first part is to analyze the relationship between human state and physiological cues, and to introduce the conceptual design of Nano-Skin. Generally, heart rate, skin conductance, skin temperature, operating force, blood alcohol concentration, sweat rate, and electromyography are closely related with human state. They can be measured through human-machine contact surfaces using Nano-Skin. The second part is to discuss the technologies for skin temperature measurement. The third part is to introduce the design and manufacture of the Nano-Skin for skin temperature measurement. Experiments were performed to verify the performance of the Nano-Skin in temperature measurement. Overall, the study concludes that Nano-Skin is a promising product for measuring physiological cues on human-machine contact surfaces to detect human state.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.187-197
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• 2008

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to assess the reproducibility of measurement of facial skin furrows using a facial skin photographing system. Methods : Subjects were 19 patients who visited the department of acupuncture and moxsibustion, at the hospital of Oriental medical college, at Daegu Haany University for the cosmetic acupuncture treatment during August 2007 to 31th August 2007. The facial skin photograph of each participant was analyzed a total of six times in two days using DM-3(a facial skin photographing system). The square and counts of skin furrows were also measured for each one. As the statistical method, Pearson's correlation coefficient and repeated measured ANOVA were used. Results : The Pearson's correlation coefficient, it showed significantly high correlation in both the square and count of skin furrows for each analysis time. Repeated measured ANOVA showed no significant differences among analyses in both square and count of skin furrows. Conclusions : This study reveales that the measurement of the count and square of facial skin furrows by facial skin photograph analysis has high reproducibility. DM-3(a facial skin photographing system) can be useful for the evaluation of facial skin furrows in facial cosmetic acupuncture.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Near Infrared Spectroscopy Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.3101-3101
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• 2001

Near Infrared spectroscopy (NIR) used on human skin measurement was explored in the past decade. Many publications in different journals and magazines discussed the feasibility of the NIR technique for cosmetic product property studies. Based upon the results of pioneers, we have pursued some work of the NIR instrument coupled with a probe module for skin measurement in vivo and vitro. In part I of this paper, the specific Near Infrared spectroscopy instrument stability, human subject conditions and other parameters, which could affect the measurements reproducibility are discussed. Second derivative NIR spectra and Principle Components Analysis (PCA) are utilised for data interpretation. In part II of this paper, the relationship of human skin moisture and ageing, the gender information and finally, the discovery of penetration depth of NIR incident light on skin are reported. A theoretical penetration depth calculation equation is proposed. In part III, the study results of a couple of commercial skin care products effect will be described. The skin lotions were applied on human skin (in vivo) in order to exam the NIR feasibility to monitor the changes of moisture level. The results are consistently positive. From our primary study, it can conclude that the NIR is potentially a very powerful instrument for skin condition diagnostics, either for cosmetic and/or for medication purposes.

• Korean Journal of Oriental Medicine
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.103-111
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• 2008

Recently, skin diagnosis has been suggested as a promising tool for discrimination of Sasang Constitution, reported by examining the skin characteristics such as thickness, stiffness, slip, and skin textures like wrinkles and furrows. However, the works had a limitation in that clinical decision on the skin characteristics was made by relying upon oriental medicine doctors' subjective sense of touch. In order to objectify the skin diagnosis and claim its efficacy on the discrimination of the Sasang Constitutions, it is necessary to demonstrate its discrimination capability by providing numerical values in terms of physical quantities obtained from measurements using today's sensors and equipment technologies, which motivated this work as a priliminary step towards objectification of skin diagnosis. The skin characteristics focused in this work is the slip property of the back-hand skin that has been exploited using the dynamic friction measurement system. First, curved geometric effects of the back-hand skin on the measured lateral/vertical force signals were estimated using the artificially designed silicon coated structures, which led to a suggestion on a quality controlled experimental design based upon a empirical analysis model. Second, the experimental design thus suggested has been applied to the measurement of dynamic friction coefficients for two healthy male subjects of Taeumin (TE) and Soyangin (SY), respectively. The result shows that the dynamic friction coefficient is less for the SY subject than for the TE subject around the area of the skin used for diagnosis by the oriental medicine doctor, implying the TE subject's skin is more slippery than the SE subject's that is consistent with the oriental medicine doctor's diagnosis. Hopefully, this work can provide guidelines for obtaining quality data in friction measurement to be collected for discussion on the efficacy of the skin diagnosis and its objectification through statistical analysis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.525-526
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• 2006

The products designed by human sensibility and ergonomics are given good impression. Especially the touch feeling on the human skin is very useful sensibility for quality of products. Elasticity and viscosity of human skin is very important element in product design based on ergonomics. In this paper, we describe a sophisticated method for measurement of dynamic viscoelasticity characteristics of human skin. For this measurement, we developed a measurement system assembled with load cell, actuator, amplifier and data acquisition system. The $MATLAB^{TM}$ is used to analyze the data and fit a approximation curves.

• Advances in biomechanics and applications
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.269-277
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• 2014

In skin-marker based motion analysis, knee translation measurement is highly dependent on a pre-selected reference point (functional center) on each segment determined by the location of anatomical landmarks. However, the placement of skin markers on palpable anatomical landmarks (i.e., femoral epicondyles) has limited reproducibility. Thus, it produces large variances in knee translation measurement among different subjects, as well as across studies. In order improve the repeatability of knee translation measurement, in this study an optimization method was introduced, by which the femoral functional center was numerically determined. At that point the knee anteroposterior translation during the stance phase of walking was minimized. This new method was tested on 30 healthy subjects during walking in gait lab with motion capture system. Using this new method, the impact of skin marker position (at anatomical landmarks) on the knee translation measurement has been minimized. In addition, the ranges of anteroposterior knee translations during stance phase were significantly (p<0.001) smaller than those measured by conventional method which relies on a pre-selected functional center ($11.1{\pm}3.5mm$ vs. $19.9{\pm}5.5mm$). The results of anteroposterior translation using this new method were very close to a previously reported knee translation (12.4 mm) from dual fluoroscopic imaging technique. Moreover, this new method increased the reproducibility of knee translation measurement by 50%.

• Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.20-29
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• 2010

1. Objectives Our goal is to observe the feasibility of constitution discrimination from computing quantitative roughness index from dynamic friction coefficients and their gradients with the measurement device of skin friction with 3-Axis load cell sensor. 2. Methods In the traditional Korean medicine, skin diagnosis is one of the examination methods to discriminate Sasang constitution since it was known that Tae-eumin has rough skin, and Soyangin has smooth one. It is based on the skin roughness on the back of one's hand for the discrimination. The measurement device of skin friction with 3-axis load cell sensor has been developed in order to provide quantitative skin roughness through dynamic friction coefficients. The effective interval of the coefficients is obtained from the automatic sampling algorithm to use their curvature and slope. Then, Fisher's discriminant function of them makes the discrimination. 3. Results The success rate of extracting the effective interval was about 90% and the discriminant accuracy between Tae-eumin and Soyangin was 70% and 68% for men and women, respectively. The entire methods showed the possibility to distinguish between Tae-eumin and Soyangin by using stochastic properties of roughness index, which can make the entire system to include the measurement, the computation of the roughness index and the discrimination of constitution automatical. 4. Conclusions The measurement device, the automatic sampling algorithm of dynamic friction coefficients and the constitution discrimination algorithm were developed, respectively, and their combination can become the serial and automatic procedure for quantitative and objective skin diagnosis, which mimics the movement of the Oriental medical doctors' skin diagnosis. It can be applied to healthcare as well as the diagnosis of constitution in a u-Health system soon.

• Proceedings of the PSK Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.290.2-290.2
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• 2003

Skin Moisture is an important factor in skin health. Measurement of moisture content can provide diagnostic information on the condition of skin. In this study, a photo diode array type near infrared spectroscopy was used to determine skin moisture. Diffuse reflectance spectra were collected and transformed to absorbance using 1-nm stepsize over the wavelength range of 1100 nm to 2200 nm. (omitted)

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.939-947
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• 1997

An experimental study of the skin friction measurement in a turbulent boundary-layer has been carried out. The skin friction measurements are made using the laser interferometer skin friction (LISF) meter, which optically detects the rate of thinning of an oil applied to the test surface. This technique produces reliable skin friction data over a wide range of flow situations up to 3-dimensional complicated flows with separation, where traditional skin friction measurement techniques are not applicable. The present measured data in a turbulent boundary-layer on a flat plate using the LISF technique shows a good comparison with the result from the previous velocity profile techniques, which proves the validity of the present technique. An extensive error analysis is carried out for the present technique yielding an uncertainty of about .+-.8%, which makes them suitable for CFD code validation purposes. Finally the measurements of the skin friction in a separated region after a surface-mounted obstacle are also presented.