• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.338-343
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• 2007

BOLD T2*-weighted MR images reflects cortical blood flow and oxygenation alterations. fMRI study relies on the detection of localized changes in BOLD signal intensity. Since fMRI measures the very small modulations in BOLD signal intensity that occur during changes in brain activity, it is also very sensitive to small signal intensity variations caused by physiologic noise during the scan. Due to the complexity of movement of various organs associated with heart beat, it is important to reduce cardiac related noise rather than other physiological noise which could be required with relatively simple method. Therefore, a number of methods have been developed for the estimation and reduction of cardiac noise in fMRI study. But, each method has limitation. In this study, we proposed a new estimation method for brain activities influenced by blood pulsation effect using regression analysis with blood pulsation signal and the correspond slice of fMRI. We could find out that the right anterior cingulate cortex and right olfactory cortex and left olfactory cortex were largely influenced by blood pulsation effect for new method. These observed areas are mostly on the structure of anterior cerebral artery in the brain. That is convinced with that our method would be valid and our new method is easier to apply in practice and reduce computational burden than the retrospective method.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.65 no.5
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• pp.697-709
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• 2022

Objective : The present study aimed to identify the function of ischemic stroke (IS) patients' peripheral blood and its role in IS, explore the pathogenesis, and provide direction for clinical research progress by comprehensive bioinformatics analysis. Methods : Two datasets, including GSE58294 and GSE22255, were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus database. GEO2R was utilized to obtain differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis of DEGs were performed using the database annotation, visualization and integrated discovery database. The protein-protein interaction (PPI) network of DEGs was constructed by search tool of searching interactive gene and visualized by Cytoscape software, and then the Hub gene was identified by degree analysis. The microRNA (miRNA) and miRNA target genes closely related to the onset of stroke were obtained through the miRNA gene regulatory network. Results : In total, 36 DEGs, containing 27 up-regulated and nine down-regulated DEGs, were identified. GO functional analysis showed that these DEGs were involved in regulation of apoptotic process, cytoplasm, protein binding and other biological processes. KEGG enrichment analysis showed that these DEGs mediated signaling pathways, including human T-cell lymphotropic virus (HTLV)-I infection and microRNAs in cancer. The results of PPI network and cytohubba showed that there was a relationship between DEGs, and five hub genes related to stroke were obtained : SOCS3, KRAS, PTGS2, EGR1, and DUSP1. Combined with the visualization of DEG-miRNAs, hsa-mir-16-5p, hsa-mir-181a-5p and hsa-mir-124-3p were predicted to be the key miRNAs in stroke, and three miRNAs were related to hub gene. Conclusion : Thirty-six DEGs, five Hub genes, and three miRNA were obtained from bioinformatics analysis of IS microarray data, which might provide potential targets for diagnosis and treatment of IS.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.543-562
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• 2006

Base isolation technology has been accepted as a feasible and attractive way in improving seismic resistance of structures. The seismic design of new seismically isolated structures is mainly governed by the Uniform Building Code (UBC-97) published by the International Conference of Building Officials. In the UBC code, the distribution formula of the inertial (or lateral) forces leads to an inverted triangular shape in the vertical direction. It has been found to be too conservative for most isolated structures through experimental, computational and real earthquake examinations. In this paper, four simple and reasonable design formulae, based on the first mode of the base-isolated structures, for the lateral force distribution on isolated structures have been validated by a multiple-bay three-story base-isolated steel structure tested on the shaking table. Moreover, to obtain more accurate results for base-isolated structures in which higher mode contributions are more likely expected during earthquakes, another four inertial force distribution formulae are also proposed to include higher mode effects. Besides the experimental verification through shaking table tests, the vertical distributions of peak accelerations computed by the proposed design formulae are in good agreement with the recorded floor accelerations of the USC University Hospital during the Northridge earthquake.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.11 no.10
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• pp.1045-1054
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• 2002

Urban atmospheric conditions are usually settled as warmer, drier and dirtier than those of rural counterpart owing to reduction of green space and water space area heat retention in surfaces such as concrete and asphalt, and abundant fuel consumption. The characteristics of urban climate has become generally known as urban heat island. The purpose of this study is to investigate the temporal and spatial distribution of the heat emission from human activity, which is a main factor causing urban heat island. In this study, the anthropogenic heat fluxes emitted from vehicles and constructions are estimated by computational grid mesh which is divided by 1km $\times$ 1km. The anthropogenic heat flux by grid mesh can be applied to a numerical simulation model of the local circulation model. The constructions are classified into 9 energy-consumption types - hospital, hotel, office, department store, commercial store, school, factory, detached house and flat. The vehicles classified into 4 energy-consumption types - car, taxi, truck and bus. The seasonal mean of anthropogenic heat flux around central Daegu exceeded $50 W/m^2$ in winter. The annual mean anthropogenic heat flux exceeded $20 W/m^2$. The values are nearly equivalent to the anthropogenic heat flux in the suburbs of Tokyo, Japan.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.45-54
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• 2022

We analyzed the low wall-shear stress area in the intracranial aneurysm that occurred at an anterior communicating artery with a special emphasis on vortical structures close to the wall. We reconstructed the aneurysm model from patient CTA data. We assumed blood as an incompressible Newtonian fluid and treated the blood vessel as a solid wall. The pulsatile boundary condition was applied at the inlet of the anterior cerebral artery. From the instantaneous flow field, we computed the histogram of the wall-shear stress over the aneurysm wall and found the low wall-shear stress event (< 0.4 Pa). This extreme event was due to the low wall-shear stress area that occurred at the daughter sac. We found that the merging of two vortices induced the low wall-shear stress area; one arises from the morphological characteristics of the daughter sac, and the other is formed by a jet flow into the aneurysm sac. The latter approaches the daughter sac, which ultimately leads to the strong ejection event near the daughter sac.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.258-266
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• 2015

The modern radiotherapy technique which delivers a large amount of dose to patients asks to confirm the positions of patients or tumors more accurately by using X-ray projection images of high-definition. However, a rapid increase in patient's exposure and image information for CT image acquisition may be additional burden on the patient. In this study, by introducing structural similarity (SSIM) index that can effectively extract the structural information of the image, we analyze the differences between daily acquired x-ray images of a patient to verify the accuracy of patient positioning. First, for simulating a moving target, the spherical computational phantoms changing the sizes and positions were created to acquire projected images. Differences between the images were automatically detected and analyzed by extracting their SSIM values. In addition, as a clinical test, differences between daily acquired x-ray images of a patient for 12 days were detected in the same way. As a result, we confirmed that the SSIM index was changed in the range of 0.85~1 (0.006~1 when a region of interest (ROI) was applied) as the sizes or positions of the phantom changed. The SSIM was more sensitive to the change of the phantom when the ROI was limited to the phantom itself. In the clinical test, the daily change of patient positions was 0.799~0.853 in SSIM values, those well described differences among images. Therefore, we expect that SSIM index can provide an objective and quantitative technique to verify the patient position using simple x-ray images, instead of time and cost intensive three-dimensional x-ray images.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.84 no.1
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• pp.185-196
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• 2023

Purpose This study aimed to investigate radiomics analysis of ultrasonographic images to develop a potential biomarker for predicting lymph node metastasis in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) patients. Materials and Methods This study included 431 PTC patients from August 2013 to May 2014 and classified them into the training and validation sets. A total of 730 radiomics features, including texture matrices of gray-level co-occurrence matrix and gray-level run-length matrix and single-level discrete two-dimensional wavelet transform and other functions, were obtained. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator method was used for selecting the most predictive features in the training data set. Results Lymph node metastasis was associated with the radiomics score (p < 0.001). It was also associated with other clinical variables such as young age (p = 0.007) and large tumor size (p = 0.007). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.687 (95% confidence interval: 0.616-0.759) for the training set and 0.650 (95% confidence interval: 0.575-0.726) for the validation set. Conclusion This study showed the potential of ultrasonography-based radiomics to predict cervical lymph node metastasis in patients with PTC; thus, ultrasonography-based radiomics can act as a biomarker for PTC.

• The korean journal of orthodontics
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.66-76
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• 2010

Objective: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common disorder which is characterized by a recurrence of entire or partial collapse of the pharyngeal airway during sleep. A given tidal volume must traverse the soft tissue tube structure of the upper airway, so the tendency for airway obstruction is influenced by the geometries of the duct and characteristics of the airflow in respect to fluid dynamics. Methods: Individualized 3D FEA models were reconstructed from pretreatment computerized tomogram images of three patients with obstructive sleep apnea. 3D computational fluid dynamics analysis was used to observe the effect of airway geometry on the flow velocity, negative pressure and pressure drop in the upper airway at an inspiration flow rate of 170, 200, and 230 ml/s per nostril. Results: In all 3 models, large airflow velocity and negative pressure were observed around the section of minimum area (SMA), the region which narrows around the velopharynx and oropharynx. The bigger the Out-A (outlet area)/ SMA-A (SMA area) ratio, the greater was the change in airflow velocity and negative pressure. Conclusions: Pressure drop meaning the difference between highest pressure at nostril and lowest pressure at SMA, is a good indicator for upper airway resistance which increased more as the airflow volume was increased.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.258-264
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• 2007

Spatiotemporal changes of brain rhythmic activity at a certain frequency have been usually monitored in real time using scalp potential maps of multi-channel electroencephalography(EEG) or magnetic field maps of magnetoencephalography(MEG). In the present study, we investigate if it is possible to implement a real-time brain activity monitoring system which can monitor spatiotemporal changes of cortical rhythmic activity on a subject's cortical surface, neither on a sensor plane nor on a standard brain model, with a high temporal resolution. In the suggested system, a frequency domain inverse operator is preliminarily constructed, considering the individual subject's anatomical information, noise level, and sensor configurations. Spectral current power at each cortical vertex is then calculated for the Fourier transforms of successive sections of continuous data, when a single frequency or particular frequency band is given. An offline study which perfectly simulated the suggested system demonstrates that cortical rhythmic source changes can be monitored at the cortical level with a maximal delay time of about 200 ms, when 18 channel EEG data are analyzed under Pentium4 3.4GHz environment. Two sets of artifact-free, eye closed, resting EEG data acquired from a dementia patient and a normal male subject were used to show the feasibility of the suggested system. Factors influencing the computational delay are investigated and possible applications of the system are discussed as well.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.187-193
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• 2010

In this study we have designed and fabricated an inexpensive micro electronic system that we call Alvitek. It can indirectly but accurately predict and display the partial pressures of alveolar oxygen and carbon dioxide for the patients in the ICU of a hospital. Alvitek consists of both hardware part and software part. Performance of the system is tested by animal experiment with pigs for various $F_{t}e_{2}$ and RR(Respiratory Rate) values under the mechanical ventilation. The predicted alveolar gas partial pressures are cprpared with the approximate alveolar oxygen partial pressures easily calculated by the physician’s bedside formula. As a result, we have concluded that the relative error of A-$aDe_2$ calculated by the bedside formula grows seriously for lower $F_{t}e_{2}$ values. The present prediction method of Alvitek is henceforth believed very meaningful to the physicians. The system hardware and software are described in the text.