• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.448-463
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• 2000

Background : Pulmonary infiltrate is a frequent cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with leukemia. It is often hard to obtain a reliable diagnosis by clinical and radiologic findings alone. The aim of this study was to evaluate diagnostic and therapeutic benefits of invasive procedures for new lung infiltrates in leukemia. Methods : Patients with leukemia who developed new lung infiltrates from December 1994 to March 1999 were included in this study. These patients were classified into the empirical group who received empirical therapy only and into the invasive group who underwent bronchoscopy or surgical lung biopsy for the diagnostic purpose of new lung infiltrates. A retrospective chart review was done to find the etiologies of new lung infiltrates, the yield of invasive procedures, outcome as well as predicting factors for survival. Results : 1) One hundred-two episodes of new lung infiltrates developed in 90 patients with leukemia. Invasive procedures were performed in 44 episodes while 58 episodes were treated with empirical therapy only. 2) Invasive procedures yielded a specific diagnosis in 72.7%(32/44), of which 78.1% had infectious etiology. Therapeutic plan was changed in 52.3%(23/44) of patients after invasive procedures. None of them showed procedure-related mortality. 3) The overall survival rate was 62.7%(64/102). Survival rate in the invasive group (79.5%) was significantly better than that in the empirical group (50.0%) (p=0.002). 4) Upon multivariate analysis, the performance of invasive procedures, no need for mechanical ventilation and achievement of complete remission of leukemia after induction chemotherapy were the independent predicting factors for survival in patients with leukemia and new lung infiltrates. Conclusion : Bronchoscopy and surgical lung biopsy are useful in the diagnosis of new lung infiltrates in patients with leukemia. However, survival benefits of invasive procedures should be considered together with disease status of leukemia and severity of respiratory compromise.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.235-240
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• 2008

Purpose: At the beginning of PET/CT, Computed Tomography was mainly used only for Attenuation Correction (AC), but as the performance of the CT have been increase, it could give improved diagnostic information with Contrast Media. But it was controversial that Contrast Media could affect AC on PET/CT scan. Some submitted thesis' show that Contrast Media could overestimate when it is for AC data processing. On the contrary, the opinion that Contrast Media could be possible to affect the alteration of SUV because of the overestimated AC. But it does not have a definite effect on the diagnosis. Thus, the affection of Contrast Media on AC was investigated in this study. Materials and Methods: Patient inclusion criteria required a history of a malignancy and performance of an integrated PET/CT scan and contrast- enhanced CT scan within a 1-day period. Thirty oncologic patients who had PET/CT scan from December 2007 to June 2008 underwent staging evaluation and met these criteria. All patients fasted for at least 6 hr before the IV injection of approximately 5.6 MBq/kg (0.15 mCi/kg) of $^{18}F$-FDG and were scanned about 60 min after injection. All patients had a whole body PET/CT performed without IV contrast media followed by a contrast-enhanced CT on the Discovery STe PET/CT scanner. CT data were used for AC and PET images came out after AC. The ROIs drew and measured SUV. A paired t-test of these results was performed to assess the significance of the difference between the SUV obtained from the two attenuation corrected PET images. Results: The mean and maximum Standardized Uptake Values (SUV) for different regions averaged over all Patients. Comparing before using Contrast Media and after using, Most of ROIs have the increased SUV when it did Contrast Enhanced CT compare to Non-Contrast enhanced CT. All regions have increased SUV and also their p value was under 0.05 except the mean SUV of the Heart region. Conclusion: In this regard, the effect on SUV measurements that occurs when a contrast-enhanced CT is used for attenuation correction could have significant clinical ramifications. But some submitted thesis insisted that the percentage change in SUV that can determine or modify clinical management of oncology patients is small. Because there was not much difference that could be discovered by interpreter. But obviously the numerical change was occurred and on the stage finding primary region, small change would be base line, such as the region of liver which has greater change than the other regions needs more attention.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.57-70
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• 2003

Background : Small cell lung cancer represents approximately 20% of all carcinomas of the lung, and is recognized as having a poor long term outcome compared to non-small cell lung cancer. Therefore, this study investigated the prognostic factors in small cell lung cancer patients in order to improved the survival rate by using the proper therapeutic methods. Material and method : The clinical data from 394 patients who diagnosed with small cell lung cancer and treated from 1993 to 2001 at the Kosin University Gospel Hospital, were analyzed. Result : There were 314 male patients (79.7%), and 80 female patients (20.3%). The number of those with limited disease was 177 (44.9%), and the number of those with extensive disease was 217 (55.1%). Overall, 366 out of 394 enrolled patients had died. The median survival time was 215 days (95% CI : 192-237days). The disease stage, Karnofsky performance state, 5% body weight loss for the recent 3 months, chemotherapy regimens, and the additive chest radiotherapy were identified as being statistically significant factors for the survival time. The median survival times of the supportive care group, one anticancer therapy, and two or more treatment groups were 17 days, 211 days, and 419 day, respectively (p<0.001). These data emphasize the importance of anticancer treatment to improve survival time for patients. The group of concurrent chemoradiotherapy (30 patients) showed significantly longer survival time than the group given sequential chemoradiotherapy (55 patients) (528 days versus 373 days, p=0.0237). The favorable prognostic factors of laboratory study were groups of leukocyte =8,000/mm3, ALP=200 U/L, LDH=450 IU/L, NSE=15 ng/mL, s-GOT=40 IU/L. In extensive disease, there was no difference according to the number of metastatic site. However, the median survival time of patients with ipsilateral pleural effusion had longer than patients having other metastatic sites. According to the survey periods, three groups were divided into 1993-1995, 1996-1998, and 1999-2001. The median survival time was significantly prolonged after 1999 in comparison to previous groups (177 days, 194 days, 289 days, p=0.001, 0.002, respectively). Conclusion: Disease stage and 5% body weight loss for recent 3 months at diagnostic state were significant prognostic factors. In addition, the performance status, serum ALP, LDH, NSE, CEA levels also appear to be prognostic factors. The survival time of those patients with small cell lung cancer has been prologned in recent years. It was suggested that the used of the EP (etoposied and cisplatin) chemotherapy method and concurrent chemoradiotherapy for patients with a limited stage contributed to the improved survival time.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.127-141
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• 2017

Advances in Internet technologies and the proliferation of mobile devices enabled consumers to approach a wide range of goods and services, while causing an adverse effect that they have hard time reaching their congenial items even if they devote much time to searching for them. Accordingly, businesses are using the recommender systems to provide tools for consumers to find the desired items more easily. Association Rule Mining (ARM) technology is advantageous to recommender systems in that ARM provides intuitive form of a rule with interestingness measures (support, confidence, and lift) describing the relationship between items. Given an item, its relevant items can be distinguished with the help of the measures that show the strength of relationship between items. Based on the strength, the most pertinent items can be chosen among other items and exposed to a given item's web page. However, the diversity of the measures may confuse which items are more recommendable. Given two rules, for example, one rule's support and confidence may not be concurrently superior to the other rule's. Such discrepancy of the measures in distinguishing one rule's superiority from other rules may cause difficulty in selecting proper items for recommendation. In addition, in an online environment where a web page or mobile screen can provide a limited number of recommendations that attract consumer interest, the prudent selection of items to be included in the list of recommendations is very important. The exposure of items of little interest may lead consumers to ignore the recommendations. Then, such consumers will possibly not pay attention to other forms of marketing activities. Therefore, the measures should be aligned with the probability of consumer's acceptance of recommendations. For this reason, this study proposes a model-based approach to combine those measures into one unified measure that can consistently determine the ranking of recommended items. A regression model was designed to describe how well the measures (independent variables; i.e., support, confidence, and lift) explain consumer's acceptance of recommendations (dependent variables, hit rate of recommended items). The model is intuitive to understand and easy to use in that the equation consists of the commonly used measures for ARM and can be used in the estimation of hit rates. The experiment using transaction data from one of the Korea's largest online shopping malls was conducted to show that the proposed model can improve the hit rates of recommendations. From the top of the list to 13th place, recommended items in the higher rakings from the proposed model show the higher hit rates than those from the competitive model's. The result shows that the proposed model's performance is superior to the competitive model's in online recommendation environment. In a web page, consumers are provided around ten recommendations with which the proposed model outperforms. Moreover, a mobile device cannot expose many items simultaneously due to its limited screen size. Therefore, the result shows that the newly devised recommendation technique is suitable for the mobile recommender systems. While this study has been conducted to cover the cross-selling in online shopping malls that handle merchandise, the proposed method can be expected to be applied in various situations under which association rules apply. For example, this model can be applied to medical diagnostic systems that predict candidate diseases from a patient's symptoms. To increase the efficiency of the model, additional variables will need to be considered for the elaboration of the model in future studies. For example, price can be a good candidate for an explanatory variable because it has a major impact on consumer purchase decisions. If the prices of recommended items are much higher than the items in which a consumer is interested, the consumer may hesitate to accept the recommendations.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.13-23
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• 2010

Purpose: This study was to identify the role of general hospice palliative nurse through job analysis (duties, task, and task elements). Methods: The sample consisted of 136 nurses or professors who were performing duties related to hospice care areas in Korea. A survey method was used, and the questionnaire included frequencies, criticality, and difficulties of task elements in job description by the DACUM method. Descriptive statistics were performed by using SPSS WIN 17.0. Results: The job description of general hospice palliative nurse was identified 8 duties, 36 tasks, and 137 task elements. As for the 8 duties, the average scores of frequency, criticality, and difficulty were 2.94, 3.66, and 2.80, respectively. The role of ‘pain assessment’ was the most important task element among frequency and criticality. The lowest score at the frequency and criticality were ‘manage public finance’ and ‘collect datum through diagnostic test & lab', respectively. Furthermore, the role of 'identify spiritual needs of patients and family' was the most difficult task, whereas the role of 'manage documents and information' was the least. Conclusion: In this study, we could recognize the reality of general hospice palliative nurse's performances. For general hospice palliative nurse, therefore, concrete practice guide lines of psychosocial and spiritual care, communication skills, and bereavement care with qualifying system are critically needed.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.31-36
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• 2016

The paper discusses radiation dose of dual energy CT on which copper modulation layer, is mounted in order to improve diagnostic performance of the dual energy CT. The radiation dose is estimated using MCNPX and its results are compared with that of the conventional dual energy CT system. CT X-ray spectra of 80 and 120 kVp, which are usually used for thorax, abdominal, head, and neck CT scans, were generated by the SPEC78 code and were used for the source specification 'SDEF' card for MCNPX dose modeling. The copper modulation layer was located 20 cm away from a source covering half of the X-ray window. The radiation dose was measured as changing its thickness from 0.5 to 2.0 mm at intervals of 0.5 mm. Since the MCNPX tally provides only normalized values to a single particle, the dose conversion coefficients of F6 tally for the modulation layer-based dual energy CBCT should be calculated for matching the modeling results into the actual dose. The dose conversion coefficient is $7.2*10^4cGy/output$ that is obtained from dose calibration curve between F6 tally and experimental results in which GAFCHORMIC EBT3 films were exposed by an already known source. Consequently, the dose of the modulation layer-based dual energy cone beam CT is 33~40% less than that of the single energy CT system. On the basis of the results, it is considered that scattered dose produced by the copper modulation layer is very small. It shows that the modulation layer-based dual energy CBCT system can effectively reduce radiation dose, which is the major disadvantage of established dual energy CT.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.3-7
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• 2014

Purpose SPECT/CT scan to be performed attenuation correction on the basis of CT induce an overestimation of the site due to the beam hardening artifact by metal cover and reduce the images quality. Therefore, this study using a phantom that has been inserted artificial hip joint investigated that effect on the SPECT/CT image causing by metal artifact for varying the parameters of the Attenuation Map. Materials and Methods Siemens Symbia T16 SPECT/CT equipment was used. Artificial hip joint was inserted to SPECT/PET phantom, 17 mm sphere of Bright Streak area in CT image was filled with Tc-99m so that the radiation activity was 8 times compared to background. And then Hot and Background was measured in varying Wide Beam Coefficient on Attenuation Map and RBR (Region to Background Ratio) of Metal and Non-Metal was calculated and analyzed depending on the presence or absence of the hip joint. Results It tended to hot count of Non-Metal and Metal to increase as the value of the manual mode is increased, hot count ratio with the group of both manual mode 0.5 and 0.4 is the best match. Also, in automatic mode, the ratio of RBRNon-Metal and RBRMetal was 1.135, statistically significant difference was not observed in the manual mode 0.5 and 0.4. Conclusion In the automatic mode of Wide Beam Coefficient in attenuation correction map, it was found that it is over-correction by 13.52%, it was possible to minimize the over-correction by the artifact in 0.5 and 0.4 of manual mode. Further studies should be performed in order to apply to a patient with the help of this and it is considered possible to reduce the over-correction by the metal artifact of an artificial hip joint for Hip-Resurfacing Arthroplasty patients, and to improve the diagnostic performance.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.17-21
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• 2014

Purpose With the recent rise of social issue regarding radiation exposure, attention to medical radiation use has been placed under a great spotlight. During PET-CT examination, generally about 40% more of $^{18}F$-FDG is used than EANM recommendation. While maintaining the diagnostic test result, we hope to find optimal injection dose to minimize the $^{18}F$-FDG in patients by utilizing the latest PET-CT scanner which is equiped with the newest technology. Materials and Methods During this experiment, the Biograph Truepoint 40 (siemens, USA) installed in 2007 and mCT 64 (siemens, USA) installed in 2011 were used and evaluated NECR (noise-equivalent counting rate) by using a scatter phantom. For the image quality evaluation of each scanner, we injected 3.7, 4.44 and 5.18 MBq/kg of $^{18}F$-FDG in NEMA IEC Body Phantom and also evaluated SNR between two scanners by using the data acquired at 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110 and 120 sec per bed. For the clinical evaluation, actual data of patients who were injected $^{18}F$-FDG 3.7, 4.44, 5.18 MBq/kg were used to compare SNR and draw a final result. Results As a result, mCT 64 peak NECR value was 1.65e+005, which is 10% higher than Turepoint 40. SNR values using the IEC body phantom was 17.9%, 17.4% and 17.1% higher in $^{18}F$-FDG 3.7 MBq/kg, 4.44 MBq/kg and 5.18 MBq/kg. In clinical patients, SNR values of the image mCT 64 was 16.5, which is 25% higher than Turepoint 40 scanner. Conclusion To draw a conclusion from the test result of this experiment, the same quality of SNR could be attained even with 10% reduced injection dose, if when the duration is extended by 10 sec/bed. This optimal result was possible due to enhanced equipment. The NECR (one of the equipment's performance assessment criteria for the scanner) increased by 10% and the SNR (one of the image quality assessment criteria) also increased by 17.5%. Therefore, we can expect to reduce the injection dose without deterioration of image quality. In consequence, it will also help to decrease the patient's anxiety of the radiation exposure.

• Childhood Kidney Diseases
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.63-74
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• 2009

Purpose : The current nationally representative data on inpatient care are important to make the of the national public health policy because distributions and the prevalence of diseases among children and adolescents represent the socioeconomic status of the society. The prevalence of chronic disease is increasing now in Korea as the socioeconomic condition is improving. We analyzed a part of genitourinary tract disease of the cross-sectional hospital discharge survey data in Korea collected recently to delineate the trend of genitourinary tract diseases. Methods : Korean nationwide hospital discharge survey for pediatric inpatients in the period from 2004 to 2006 was analyzed. Diagnoses in the data were coded using ICD-10 classification. Totally 826,896 cases were collected from the 85 training hospitals. Selected data of genitourinary tract diseases (belonging to N00-N99 by ICD-10) among 826,896 cases of final inpatients data were analyzed for this study. Results : Among total patients of 826,896, diseases of the genitourinary system accounted for 4.1%. and four diagnostic categories accounted for 92.8%. These were other diseases of the urinary system (N30-39), 45.8%, disease of male genital organs (N40-51),19.1%, glomerular diseases (N00-08), 17.3%, renal tubulo-interstitial diseases (N10-16), 10.6%, respectively. Conclusion : Genitourinary tract disease in pediatric inpatient shows decreasing tendency but the prevalence of chronic diseases is increasing in Korea as the socioeconomic condition is improving. For further comprehensive analysis, regular and organized nationwide survey should be performed. Development of a new data collecting system will improve the performance of such nationwide survey.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.92-101
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• 2009

Purpose: Scintimammography is one of the screening tests for the early diagnosis of breast cancer. It has been widely accepted as very useful in assessing masses that have not been detected in breast scanning. This method is highly sensitive and specific with respect to the diagnosis of primary and relapsing breast cancer. It has some difficulties, however, in detecting tumors sized 1 cm and below due to the radioactivity around the breast and the geometrical structure of the equipment. The recent introduction of high-resolution Breast-specific Gamma Imaging (BSGI) has made it possible to more accurately discriminate between malignant and benign tumors than with any other test method. Thus, the possibility of an unnecessary biopsy being performed has decreased. The purpose of this study was to examine the diagnostic capacity of mammography, breast sonography, and scintimammography, which are used for the early diagnosis of known breast cancer, and of BSGI, and to evaluate the skillfulness of radiologists. Materials and Methods: The 53 volunteers participants who had no clinical manifestation of breast cancer underwent the BSGI in February 2009. In the BSGI procedure, scanning images were obtained from the craniocaudal projection (CC) and the mediolateral Oblique projection (MLO), as well as from the additional $80{\times}80$-matrix-sized views at various angles in the Present Time method, 10 minutes after the 25 mCi $^{99m}Tc$-MIBI was injected. Results: The results of the BSGI showed that two participants had masses in their breast tissue. As the results of the diagnosis of four participants were not clear, they were retested and the results of the second test were negative. The results of the clinical screening test for breast cancer showed that the sensitivity of BSGI, scintimammography, mammography, and breast sonography was 86.5%, 77.8%, 85~90%, and 66.7%, respectively, and that their specificity was 92.4%, 84.2%, 20~42%, and 68%, respectively. Conclusion: The autodiagnosis and breast cancer screening test are needed for the early diagnosis of breast cancer. It was not easy, however, to accurately determine the presence of a mass in the breast using the existing breast cancer screening test. The patients with unclear test findings were made to undergo a histologic biopsy for a more accurate diagnosis. It is expected that the BSGI can provide useful information for the early diagnosis of breast cancer and of primary breast cancer, and will reduce the performance of unnecessary biopsies because of its higher sensitivity and specificity than existing breast cancer screening tests.