• Journal of the Korean Medical Association
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• v.61 no.11
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• pp.649-654
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• 2018

Although the dermoscopy had very long history since its introduction in 17th century, only recently it has been possible to see the widespread application of dermoscopy in the dermatology clinic. One of the most promising areas where the dermoscopy can be applied is the diagnosis of skin cancer, especially malignant melanoma. Due to its inherent limitation to obtain in-depth information-literally, from more than skin-deep and more importantly, from microscopic structures-of skin cancers, dermoscopy cannot replace the present gold-standard 'biopsy' in the diagnosis of skin cancer. However, several advantages of dermoscopy over biopsy merit further considerations. For example, as a non-invasive tool, dermoscopy is best suited for the follow-up of suspicious skin lesions, and as an all-at-a-glance tool, dermoscopy can aid the selection of the best biopsy-site to obtain the most meaningful pathological information from the minimal tissue specimen. There goes a saying that 'it takes two to tango,' similarly, we might need the two (biopsy and dermoscopy) to cope rhythmically with the varying tempos of everprogressing skin tumorigenesis and to reveal the true face of skin cancers usually hidden in various disguises.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.669-674
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• 2020

The diagnostic accuracy of dermoscopy (DS) for scabies, a highly contagious parasitic disease, remains disputed. This study aimed to assess the diagnostic accuracy of DS in scabies, analyze the factors influencing DS, and explore its role in post-treatment evaluation. Patients with suspected scabies were randomly divided into 2 groups: 71 patients in the skin scraping (SS) group and 73 patients in the DS group. The diagnostic efficiencies of SS and DS in these groups were calculated. We also analyzed the influence of body part and investigator competence on the accuracy of DS. Then 16 body parts with typical signs of scabies were monitored by DS 2 and 4 day after sulfur ointment treatment. The sensitivity and specificity of DS were 98.3% and 88.5%, respectively. Hands, arms, and the abdomen had higher positivity rates than other body parts (P<0.001). The accuracy of dermatologists' interpretations of images negative for scabies in the intermediate- and high-level groups was higher than that in the low-level group (P<0.001). At follow-up, the mites were still visible on 43.8% to 62.5% of the skin lesions 2 and 4 day after sulfur ointment treatment. These results showed that DS could significantly increase the accuracy of diagnosing scabies owing to its high sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, it may be useful for monitoring clinical responses to anti-parasitic treatment.

• Journal of the Korean Medical Association
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• v.61 no.11
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• pp.662-669
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• 2018

The cutaneous melanoma has been regarded as rare disease entity in Korea for long time but it shows a silent growth recently. Furthermore the management of cutaneous melanoma including staging system, surgical principle, sentinel lymph node biopsy and subsequent complete node dissection and, most importantly, immunotherapy and target therapy against cutaneous melanoma recently. The incidence of cutaneous melanoma is steadily increasing in Korea but its increase is rapid recent 2 decades to 4.3 times and should be greater soon according to the steeper increase of life expectancy. New staging system proposed by American Joint Committee on Cancer (2017) includes changes in individual TNM category and stage groups, particularly from a prognostic viewpoint. Dermoscopy has been successfully introduced in the differential diagnosis of pigmented skin lesion focusing on cutaneous melanoma by non-invasive simple diagnostic tool. Sentinel lymph node biopsy was a issue of long debate whether survival benefit is real or not. Temporary conclusion about this question is reached after two large scale studies and immediate complete node dissection should be performed in a certain situations. Most important change is drug therapy focusing on immunotherapy and target therapy. Braf- and MEK-inhibitor, immune checkpoint inhibitor and PD-1 blocker has been proved to be effective as a sole or combination regimen against advanced and/or high-risk adjuvant setting of cutaneous melanoma. In conclusion, these remarkable changes will be reviewed shortly here.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.53-64
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• 2023

Early detection of endometrial carcinoma in uterus is essential for effective treatment. Endometrial carcinoma is the worst kind of endometrium cancer among the others since it is considerably more likely to affect the additional parts of the body if not detected and treated early. Non-invasive medical computer vision, also known as medical image processing, is becoming increasingly essential in the clinical diagnosis of various diseases. Such techniques provide a tool for automatic image processing, allowing for an accurate and timely assessment of the lesion. One of the most difficult aspects of developing an effective automatic categorization system is the absence of huge datasets. Using image processing and deep learning, this article presented an artificial endometrium cancer diagnosis system. The processes in this study include gathering a dermoscopy images from the database, preprocessing, segmentation using hybrid Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) and optimizing the weights using the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA). The characteristics of the damaged endometrium cells are retrieved using the feature extraction approach after the Magnetic Resonance pictures have been segmented. The collected characteristics are classified using a deep learning-based methodology called Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Bi-directional LSTM classifiers. After using the publicly accessible data set, suggested classifiers obtain an accuracy of 97% and segmentation accuracy of 93%.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2014.04a
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• pp.815-818
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• 2014

영상 분석을 통한 특징 추출은 객체의 인식이나 매칭, 인덱싱 등을 위해 수반되는 준비 단계로서 분야별로 다양한 방식을 통해 수행되어 왔다. 특히, 피부 영상 분석에 있어 주목할 만한 이슈는 피부의 노화 정도를 측정하는 것이다. 피부의 거칠기는 피부의 상태와 노화를 판단하는 중요한 근거의 하나이다. 본 논문에서는 피부 나이를 측정하기 위해 피부 현미경 영상에서 피부 거칠기를 평가하는 방법을 제안한다. 이를 위해 피부 현미경으로 촬영된 이미지에 이진화 및 질감 대비 향상, 노이즈 제거 등의 전처리 과정을 수행하고, Watershed 알고리즘과 외곽선 검출을 통해, 피부를 구성하는 셀들의 영역 정보를 획득한다. 이를 바탕으로 피부 거침의 변화량을 계산하여 거칠기를 정의한다. 제안한 방법의 효과를 검증하기 위해 다양한 연령대의 피험자로부터 피부 현미경 영상을 확보하고 실험을 통해 피부 거칠기 특징이 피험자의 연령대와 상관관계가 있음을 보인다.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.22-30
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• 2015

Melanoma is originated from the melanocyte producing the melanin which determines the complexion, and it has the highest mortality among skin cancers. Acral lentiginous melanoma(ALM) arises from extremities such as hands, feet or fingernails. Since the appearance of ALM is different from melanoma on the body, conventional auto diagnosis systems for melanoma is inappropriate to detect ALM. Therefore, ALM is typically difficult to distinguish from general nevus, resulting in delayed diagnosis and bad prognosis. In this paper, we firstly introduce a determination method for ALM by dermatologists and propose a method to rotate dermoscopic images automatically as a pre-processing for facilitating the easy determination of ALM and to select the optimal value of the Gaussian differentiation filter parameter which is significant for precise pattern extraction using the scale space analysis. From experimental results, it is shown that there exists the consistency between empirical values of the Gaussian differential filter parameter and optimal values derived from the scale space analysis to distinguish nevus and ALM.

• Journal of the Korean Medical Association
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• v.61 no.11
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• pp.655-661
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• 2018

Incidence of basal and squamous cell carcinoma is increasing among Korean. With increasing this incidence we need to attend the management and prevention of these cutaneous malignancies. Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common skin malignancy. Sun exposure is the most important environmental cause of BCC. Daily sun protection especially avoiding sun exposure between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. provides most effective prevention against chronic ultraviolet-induced skin damage. Hedgehog pathway inhibitors are used locally advanced and metastatic BCC lesions in Korea. Until recently, there are no reports whether it developed resistance of Hedgehog pathway inhibitors with advanced BCC in Korean patients. Among malignant skin tumors, 19.1% were squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). The incidence of SCC was rapidly increased over the past years. However, the incidence rate of SCC in Japan has not been changed from the period 1976-1980 to 1986-1990. Sentinel lymph node biopsy for SCC did not provide diagnostic value. Bowen's disease and Erythroplasia of Queyrat are considered as carcinoma in situ of the skin. Erythroplasia of Queyrat have worse prognosis with a higher rate of malignant degeneration. Dermoscopy may helpful tool in assisting the noninvasive diagnosis of carcinoma in situ of the skin.