• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.261-268
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• 2004

Osteoporosis is a clinical condition in which the amount of bone tissue is reduced and the likelihood of fracture is increased. It is known that the electrical property of the bone is related to its density, and, in particular, the electrical resistance of the bone decreases as the bone loss increases. This implies that the electrical property of bone may be an useful parameter to diagnose osteoporosis, provided that it can be readily measured. The study attempted to evaluate the electrical conductivity of bone using a technique of electrical impedance tomography (EIT). It nay not be easy in general to get an EIT for the bone due to the big difference (an order of 2) of electrical properties between the bone and the surrounding soft tissue. In the present study, we took an adaptive mesh regeneration technique originally developed for the detection of two phase boundaries and modified it to be able to reconstruct the electrical conductivity inside the boundary provided that the geometry of the boundary was given. Numerical simulation was carried out for a tibia phantom, circular cylindrical phantom (radius of 40 mm) inside of which there is an ellipsoidal homeogenous tibia bone (short and long radius are 17 mm and 15 mm, respectively) surrounded by the soft tissue. The bone was located in the 15 mm above from the center of the circular cross section of the phantom. The electrical conductivity of the soft tissue was set to be 4 mS/cm and varies from 0.01 to 1 ms/cm for the bone. The simulation considered measurement errors in order to look into its effects. The simulated results showed that, if the measurement error was maintained less than 5 %, the reconstructed electrical conductivity of the bone was within 10 % errors. The accuracy increased with the electrical conductivity of the bone, as expected. This indicates that the present technique provides more accurate information for osteoporotic bones. It should be noted that tile simulation is based on a simple two phase image for the bone and the surrounding soft tissue when its anatomical information is provided. Nevertheless, the study indicates the possibility that the EIT technique may be used as a new means to detect the bone loss leading to osteoporotic fractures.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.175-184
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• 2018

In this paper, comparative analysis of the 9.12 Gyeongju and 11.15 Pohang earthquakes was conducted in order to provide probable explanations and reasons for the damage observed in the 11.15 Pohang earthquake from both earthquake and structural engineering perspectives. The damage potentials like Arias intensity, effective peak ground acceleration, etc observed in the 11.15 Pohang earthquake were generally weaker than those of the 9.12 Gyeongju earthquake. However, in contrast to the high-frequency dominant nature of the 9.12 Gyeongju earthquake records, the spectral power of PHA2 record observed in the soft soil site was highly concentrated around 2Hz. The base shear around 2 Hz frequency was as high as 40% building weight. This frequency band is very close to the fundamental frequency of the piloti-type buildings severely damaged in the northern part of Pohang. Unfortunately, in addition to inherent vertical irregularity, most of the damaged piloti-type buildings had plan irregularity as well and were non-seismic. All these contributed to the fatal damage. Inelastic dynamic analysis indicated that PHA2 record demands system ductility capacity of 3.5 for a structure with a fundamental period of 0.5 sec and yield base shear strength of 10% building weight. The system ductility level of 3.5 seems very difficult to be achievable in non-seismic brittle piloti-type buildings. The soil profile of the PHA2 site was inversely estimated based on deconvolution technique and trial-error procedure with utilizing available records measured at several rock sites during the 11.15 Pohang earthquake. The soil profile estimated was very typical of soil class D, implying significant soil amplification in the 11.15 Pohang earthquake. The 11.15 Pohang earthquake gave us the expensive lesson that near-collapse damage to irregular and brittle buildings is highly possible when soil is soft and epicenter is close, although the earthquake magnitude is just minor to moderate (M 5+).

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.249-254
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• 2012

The aim of this study was to investigate the setup accuracy for tangential breast treatment patients using electronic portal image and 2-D reconstruction image Twenty two patients undergoing tangential breast treatment. To explore the setup accuracy, distances between chosen landmarks were taken as reference parameters. The difference between measured reference parameters on simulation films and electronic portal images (EPIs) was calculated as the setup error. A total of 22 simulation films and 110 EPIs were evaluated. In the tangential fields, the calculated reference parameters were the central lung distance (CLD), central soft-tissue distance (CSTD), and above lung distance (ALD), below lung distance (BLD). In the medial tangential field, the average difference values for these parameters were 1.0, -6.4, -2.1 and 2.0, respectively; and the ${\sigma}$ values were 1.5, 2.3, 4.1 and 1.1, respectively. In the lateral tangential field, the average difference values for these parameters were -1.5, -4.3, -2.7 and -1.3, respectively; and the ${\sigma}$ values were 3.3, 2.1, 2.9 and 2.5, respectively. CLD, CSTD, ALD and BLD in the tangential fields are easily identifiable and are helpful for detecting setup errors using EPIs in patients undergoing tangential breast radiotherapy treatment.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.1797-1806
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• 1998

Future satellite communication systems will be developed at Ka-band (20/30 GHz) owing to the relatively wide frequency allocation and current freedom from terrestrial interference for multimedia services. A serious disadvantage of the Ka-band, however, is the very high atmospheric attenuation in rainy weather. Synchronous CDMA drastically redces the effect of self-noise with several interesting features of CDMA for mobile communications such as fixible freuqncy rese, the capability of performin soft-handover and a lower sensitivity to interference. This paper evaluates the performance of a synchronous CDMA reture link for a Ka-band geostationary satellite communication system. For a fixed satellite channel whose characteristics depend on weather conditions, the signal envelope and phase for this channel is modelled as Gaussian. The bit error and outage probability, and the detection loss due to imperfect chip timing synchronization is analytically evaluated and the system capacity degaradation due to the weather condition is estimated. The two cases consist of the general case in which all users are affected by rain condition, and the worst case in which the reference user is only affected by rain attenuation. the results for two cases of rain condition clearly show that synchronous CDMA eases the power control requirements and has less sensitivity to imperfect power control.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.83-91
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• 2008

Previous settlement prediction methods based on settlement monitoring were developed under instantaneous loading condition and have restriction to be applied to soft ground under ramp loading condition. In this study, settlement prediction method under ramp loading was developed. New settlement prediction method under ramp loading considered influence factors of consolidation settlement such as thickness of clayed layer, quantity of surcharge load and preconsolidation pressure, etc. Geometrical correction method based on hyperbolic method (1991) and correction method based on probability theory were applied to increase accuracy of settlement prediction using field monitoring data after ramp loading. Large consolidation tests for ideally controlled one dimensional consolidation under ramp loading condition were performed and the settlement behavior was predicted based on the monitoring data. New prediction method yielded good result of entire settlement behavior by using data during an early stage of ramp load. Additionally, new prediction method offered better settlement prediction which had final settlement prediction in close proximity and low RMSE(Root Mean Square Error) than previous method such as hyperbolic method did.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.9-17
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• 2024

When constructing on soft ground, managing ground settlement and safety is crucial. However, there often exists a significant disparity between the actual behavior of the ground and the design plans. In this study, we aimed to compare and analyze the difference between the predicted settlement based on theoretical formulas and the measured settlement during construction, in order to predict settlement. For this purpose, we analyzed settlement data from 18 construction sites. The results indicated that the back analysis settlement values were similar to the measured settlement values, whereas the design settlement values were significantly higher compared to the measured settlement values. Specifically, the design settlement values were 1.2 to 1.4 times higher than those derived from back analysis using measured values. The RMSE analysis revealed a value of 0.6212m for the design settlement and 0.1697m for the back analysis settlement. The difference between the back analysis settlement and the measured settlement was more than 70% lower than the difference between the design settlement and the measured settlement. This indicates that the back analysis settlement values exhibit lower error rates compared to the design settlement values.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.450-456
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• 2016

STDR (sequence time domain reflectometry) to detect a cable fault using a pseudo noise sequence as a reference signal, and time correlation analysis between the reference signal and reflection signal is robust to noisy environments and can detect intermittent faults including open faults and short circuits. On the other hand, if the distance of the fault location is far away or the fault type is a soft fault, attenuation of the reflected signal becomes larger; hence the correlation coefficient in the STDR becomes smaller, which makes fault detection difficult and the measurement error larger. In addition, automation of the fault location by detection of phase and peak value becomes difficult. Therefore, to improve the cable fault detection of a conventional STDR, this paper proposes the algorithm in that the peak value of the correlation coefficient of the reference signal is detected, and a peak value of the correlation coefficient of the reflected signal is then detected after removing the reference signal. The performance of the proposed method was validated experimentally in low-voltage power cables. The performance evaluation showed that the proposed method can identify whether a fault occurred more accurately and can track the fault locations better than conventional STDR despite the signal attenuation. In addition, there was no error of an automatic fault type and its location by the detection of the phase and peak value through the elimination of the reference signal and normalization of the correlation coefficient.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.84 no.1
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• pp.46-54
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• 2021

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate inhaler device handling in elderly patients. Inhaler devices with respect to misuse and error correction were also compared. Methods: Inhaler use technique was assessed using standardized checklists at the first visit and 3-month follow-up visit after retraining. The primary outcome was difference in the acceptable use ratio among inhaler devices. Secondary outcomes included differences in error correction, the most common step of misuse, and factors affecting the accuracy of inhaler use. Results: A total of 251 patients (mean age, 76.4 years) were included. The handling of 320 devices was assessed in the study. All patients had been trained before. However, only 24.7% of them used inhalers correctly. Proportions of acceptable use for Evohaler, Respimat, Turbuhaler, Ellipta, and Breezhaler/Handihaler were 38.7%, 50.0%, 61.4%, 60.8%, and 43.2%, respectively (p=0.026). At the second visit, the acceptable use ratio had increased. There were no significant differences among inhaler types (Evohaler, 63.9%; Respimat, 86.1%; Turbuhaler, 74.3%; Ellipta, 64.6%; and Breezhaler/Handihaler, 65.3% [p=0.129]). In multivariate analysis, body mass index, Turbuhaler, and Ellipta showed positive correlations with acceptable use of inhalers, whereas Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Assessment Test score showed a negative correlation. Conclusion: Although new inhalers have been developed, the accuracy of inhaler use remains low. Elderly patients showed more errors when using pressurized metered-dose inhalers than using dry powder inhalers and soft-mist inhalers. However, there were no significant differences in misuse among inhaler devices after individual training. Results of this study suggests that repeat training is more important than inhaler type.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.7 no.3 s.25
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• pp.153-165
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• 2007

Flexible structure uses a material with strong axial stiffness and small bending stiffness as its major structural material so it is very sensitive to initial stiffness. Therefore, the self-formation process which accomplishes a form in the natural world is grasped and it is as well investigated and classified the type of modeling techniques which are available to find the shapes of soft structures. Accordingly, for analysis and design of flexible structure, three-step analysis such as shape analysis, stress-deformation analysis, cutting pattern generation and constructional analysis is required unlike the existing stiff structure. In this study, suggest that minimize the error of side curvatures by the triangle Re-mesh pattern and draw the cutting pattern generation.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.4D
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• pp.595-601
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• 2011

There is currently applied to the unit cost per a distance (KRW/km) for estimating the conceptual cost of civil work on basic planning stage of high speed railroad. This unit cost is an arithmetic average value based on historical data, which could be in big error. It also is difficult to explain the deficiency comparing the estimated cost derived from next basic design stage. This study provides the conceptual estimation model using by the parametric method and regression analysis. Independent variables are the distance and the geological materials (earth, weathered rock, soft-rock, hard-rock), extracting from the actual data to 36 contracts. The deviation between the unit costs estimated using the developed model and the actual cost data is presented in the range from -0.4% to +31%. This range is acceptable compared the typical range "-30% to + 50%". This model will improve the accuracy of existing method and be expected to contribute to effective total cost management and the economic aspects, reduce the financial expenditure.