• Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.361-365
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• 2018

Background: Recently, we examined the effects of 2% lidocaine gel on the tactile sensory and pain thresholds of the face, tongue and hands of symptom-free individuals using quantitative sensory testing (QST); its effect was less on the skin of the face and hands than on the tongue. Consequently, instead of 2% lidocaine gel, we examined the effect of 8% lidocaine spray on the tactile sensory and pain thresholds of the skin of the face and hands of healthy volunteers. Methods: Using Semmes-Weinstein monofilaments, QST of the skin of the cheek and palm (thenar skin) was performed in 20 healthy volunteers. In each participant, two topical sprays were applied. On one side, 0.2 mL of 8% lidocaine pump spray was applied, and on the other side, 0.2 mL of saline pump spray was applied as control. In each participant, QST was performed before and 15 min after each application. Pain intensity was measured using a numeric rating scale (NRS). Results: Both the tactile detection threshold and filament-prick pain detection threshold of the cheek and thenar skin increased significantly after lidocaine application. A significant difference between the effect of lidocaine and saline applications was found on the filament-prick pain detection threshold only. NRS of the cheek skin and thenar skin decreased after application of lidocaine, and not after application of saline. Conclusion: The significant effect of applying an 8% lidocaine spray on the sensory and pain thresholds of the skin of the face and hands can be objectively scored using QST.

• The Journal of the Korean dental association
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• v.56 no.12
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• pp.686-694
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• 2018

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the validity of swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) for detecting sealant microleakage. Materials and Methods: A total of 31 extracted sound human molar, assigned as suitable for sealant application, were chosen and divided into two groups: (1) no microleakage group and (2) microleakage group by applying sealant using the different methods. All specimens were immersed in 1% methylene blue for 24 h and sectioned to confirm the absence or presence of sealant microleakage as a gold standard method. Subsequently, all the sectioned specimens were digitally photographed using a microscope with a magnification of ${\times}50$. Presence of microleakage was evaluated on a 2-point rating scale. The association of histological method with conventional methods (visual and tactile assessment) and SS-OCT was assessed using a chi-squared test. The intra- and inter-examiner reliability was calculated using Cohen's Kappa. Results: The SS-OCT showed a sensitivity of 0.73 and a specificity of 1.00, while visual and tactile assessment showed a sensitivity of 0.67 and a specificity of 0.86. The inter-examiner reliability of SS-OCT was 0.79, whereas that of the visual and tactile assessment was 0.53. Conclusions: SS-OCT can be used to non-invasively detect sealant microleakage and to monitor pit and fissure sealant in the clinics.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.365-372
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• 2022

The accurate object recognition is important for the precise and accurate manipulation. To enhance the recognition performance, we can use various types of sensors. In general, acquired data from sensors have a high sampling rate. So, in the past, the RNN-based model is commonly used to handle and analyze the time-series sensor data. However, the RNN-based model has limitations of excessive parameters. CNN-based model also can be used to analyze time-series input data. However, CNN-based model also has limitations of the small receptive field in early layers. For this reason, when we use a CNN-based model, model architecture should be deeper and heavier to extract useful global features. Thus, traditional methods like RN N -based and CN N -based model needs huge amount of learning parameters. Recently studied result shows that Fast Fourier Convolution (FFC) can overcome the limitations of traditional methods. This operator can extract global features from the first hidden layer, so it can be effectively used for feature extracting of sensor data that have a high sampling rate. In this paper, we propose the algorithm to recognize objects using tactile sensor data and the FFC model. The data was acquired from 11 types of objects to verify our posed model. We collected pressure, current, position data when the gripper grasps the objects by random force. As a result, the accuracy is enhanced from 84.66% to 91.43% when we use the proposed FFC-based model instead of the traditional model.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.88-94
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• 2023

Recently, piezoelectric tactile sensors have garnered considerable attention in the field of texture recognition owing to their high sensitivity and high-frequency detection capability. Despite their remarkable potential, improving their mechanical flexibility to attach to complex surfaces remains challenging. In this study, we present a flexible piezoelectric sensor that can be bent to an extremely small radius of up to 2.5 mm and still maintain good electrical performance. The proposed sensor was fabricated by controlling the thickness that induces internal stress under external deformation. The fabricated piezoelectric sensor exhibited a high sensitivity of 9.3 nA/kPa ranging from 0 to 10 kPa and a wide frequency range of up to 1 kHz. To demonstrate real-time texture recognition by rubbing the surface of an object with our sensor, nine sets of fabric plates were prepared to reflect their material properties and surface roughness. To extract features of the objects from the detected sensing data, we converted the analog dataset to short-term Fourier transform images. Subsequently, texture recognition was performed using a convolutional neural network with a classification accuracy of 97%.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.703-710
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• 2010

In this study, a tactile stimulator was developed to resolve some problems from the previous version of the system such as system configuration, inappropriate stimulation control and additional problems. The developed tactile stimulator consists of control unit, drive unit and vibrator unit. The control unit was controlled by E-Prime software to generate appropriate vibration pulses. The drive unit supplies enough energy to the vibrator to generate effective stimulation pulses. The vibrator unit consists of small coin type vibrator and velcro, and was made to be attached at the hand easily. The developed tactile stimulator was designed by small-size, light-weight, low-power, simple-fabrication, max 35 channels and little delay time from instruction signal of E-Prime software to vibrator. The duration and magnitude of stimulation was controlled by 10 grades and the problems concerning stimulation control were compensated by wideband frequency ranges. Additionally, the electrical safety was ensured by low voltage operation. Vibrator was made to be attached on finger as well as on any part of the subject. Since this tactile stimulator is developed based on E-Prime software which is widely used in cognitive science, it is believed that this stimulator be suitable for the wide application of cognitive science study.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.105-114
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• 2021

This study determines the differences between Korean female university students and their Chinese counterparts residing in Korea by evaluating the subjective sensation and tactile preference in fabrics for casual shirts. Seven types of white causal shirt fabrics were selected as specimens from those available in spring and autumn shirt collection. The fabrics were made from various fibers (cotton 100%, polyester 100%, flax 100%, polyester 80%/cotton 20%, polyester 65%/cotton 35%, polyester 50%/cotton 45%/spandex 5%, and polyester 50%/modal 50%). Forty Korean and Chinese female university students subjectively assessed the subjective sensation of fabrics used for casual shirts. Participants were asked to observe the seven types of fabrics and complete the questionnaire. The subjective sensation to be assessed for white casual shirt fabrics was classified into the following four factors: smoothness, lightness, softness, and stretchiness. Subjective sensation factors showed partially significant differences by nationality. Korean female students evaluated cotton fabric as being light, whereas their Chinese counterparts evaluated the polyester/cotton/spandex blended fabric as light. Korean female students evaluated polyester/modal blended fabric as being stretchable. The tactile preference for fiber composition of the fabrics showed partially significant differences by nationality. Korean female students preferred cotton 80%/polyester 20% blended fabric, polyester 50%/cotton 45%/spandex 5% blended fabric, and flax 100% fabric. The subjective sensation of the fabrics had different effects on preferences by nationality. Smoothness and softness had positive effects on preferences for the fabrics of Korean students. However, smoothness, softness, and stretchiness had positive effects on the preferences of Chinese students. The subjective sensation and tactile preference for casual shirt fabrics showed a difference between Korean female students and their Chinese counterparts. Therefore, when planning casual shirt fabrics for female university students, it is necessary to reflect on these differences in subjective sensation and tactile preference.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.151-167
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• 1989

The present study was undertaken to investigate modification in electrophysiological characteristics of cat dorsal horn cells resulting from carrageenin-induced inflammation. The followings were studied; 1) the time-course of changes in responses of the WDR (wide dynamic range) cell 1-3h after subcutaneous injection of carrageenin in its receptive field; 2) the responses of the same dorsal hern cells before and after induction of inflammation; 3) the effect of inflammation on the responsiveness of dorsal horn neurons to algogens (bradykinin & potassium); and 4) the effect of inflammation on the activity of WDR cell following administration of indomethacin and clonidine. Though responses of WDR neuron were increased dramatically during first 1h, the maximal enhancement was observed 3h after induction of inflammation especially by repetitive light tactile stimulus. Following carrageenin injection the majority of WDR neurons (10/15 units) showed enhanced responses to all the mechanical stimuli while in 3 cases responsiveness were intensified during activation by one tactile stimulus (brush or pressure). One cell was unaffected by inflammation and in another case the response was enhanced only to noxious stimulus. Five of 9 cells that could initially be driven by noxious stimulus were activated more strongly by same stimulus and even by tactile stimulus (pressure) following inflammation. In 2 cases neurons were sensitized only to noxious stimulus whereas in another 2 cells that did not show enhanced responses to noxious stimulus responses to light tactile stimulus (pressure) appeared after inflammation. Of 16 LT cells tested 6 responded to squeeze while 4 showed the characteristics of WDR cell following inflammation. No modification in responsiveness was recognized in 3 cells whereas response to only brush was enhanced in another 3 neurons. Following carrageenin injection responses of LT cell to bradykinin or $K^{+}$ were not altered whereas those of WOR neurons to bradykinin or $K^{+}$ were suppressed in 22.2% and 33.3% of cases, respectively. In two of 8 activity of HT cells were inhibited by bradykinin while in five of 8 responsiveness to $K^{+}$ were rather enhanced by inflammation. In the rest inflammation was ineffective. In inflammation-induced animal the receptive field of LT cell was not changed whereas those of WDR cell and HT cell were tremendously expanded. The enhanced responses of WDR neurons to mechanical stimuli resulted from inflammation were suppressed by intravenously injected indomethacin and clonidine suggesting that postaglandin is involved in inflammation-induced sensitization of these cells. The involvement of peripheral and central mechanisms in the modification in responsiveness of dorsal horn cells in the carrageenin-induced inflammation was discussed.

• Journal of the HCI Society of Korea
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.1-8
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• 2006

This paper presents a development of new haptic API (Application Programming Interface) that is called K-$Touch^{TM}$ haptic API. It is designed in order to allow users to interact with objects by kinesthetic and tactile modalities through haptic interfaces. The K-$Touch^{TM}$ API would serve two different types of users: high level programmers who need an easy to use haptic API for creating haptic applications and researchers in the haptic filed who need to experiment or develop with new devices and new algorithms while not wanting to re-write all the required code from scratch. Since the graphic hardware based kinesthetic rendering algorithm implemented in the K-$Touch^{TM}$ API is different from any other conventional kinesthetic algorithms, this API can provide users with haptic interaction for various data representations such as 2D, 2.5D depth(height field), 3D polygon, and volume data. In addition, this API supports kinesthetic and tactile interaction simultaneously in order to allow users with realistic haptic interaction. With a wide range of applicative characteristics, therefore, it is expected that the proposed K-$Touch^{TM}$ haptic API will assists to have deeper recognition of the environments, and enhance a sense of immersion in environments. Moreover, it will be useful development toolkit to investigate new devices and algorithms in the haptic research field.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.34 no.10
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• pp.900-909
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• 2007

This paper describes an experiment on the evaluation of human sensibility by monitoring responses to changes In the frequency and amplitude of a tactile display system. Preliminary tasks were performed to obtain effective adjectives concerning texture perception. The number of collected adjectives was originally 33. This number of adjectives was reduced to 14 by a suitability survey that asked whether an adjective is suitable for expressing a texture feeling. Finally after performing a semantic similarity evaluation, the number of adjectives was further reduced to ten and these ten were used in the main experiment. In the main experiment, selected sandpaper types and 15 selected combinations of frequencies and amplitudes of a tactile display were utilized to quantitatively evaluate the ten adjectives using a bipolar seven-point scale. The data show that a relationship exists between the independent variables(frequency, amplitude, and grit site) and the dependent variable(perceived texture). That is, the change of frequency and amplitude is directly related to perceived roughness or essential elements of human tactile sensitivity found in the preliminary experiment.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2012.10a
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• pp.15-16
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• 2012