• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• 제87권1호
• /
• pp.40-51
• /
• 2024

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic, progressive, fibrosing interstitial pneumonia with a very poor prognosis. Accurate diagnosis of IPF is essential for good outcomes but remains a major medical challenge due to variability in clinical presentation and the shortcomings of existing diagnostic tests. Medical history collection is the first and most important step in the IPF diagnosis process; the clinical probability of IPF is high if the suspected patient is 60 years or older, male, and has a history of cigarette smoking. Systemic assessment for connective tissue disease is essential in the initial evaluation of patients with suspected IPF to identify potential causes of interstitial lung disease (ILD). Radiologic examination using high-resolution computed tomography plays a pivotal role in the evaluation of patients with ILD, and prone and expiratory computed tomography images can be considered. If additional tests such as surgical lung biopsy or transbronchial lung cryobiopsy are needed, transbronchial lung cryobiopsy should be considered as an alternative to surgical lung biopsy in medical centers with experience performing this procedure. Diagnosis through multidisciplinary discussion (MDD) is strongly recommended as MDD has become the cornerstone for diagnosis of IPF, and the scope of MDD has expanded to monitoring of disease progression and suggestion of appropriate treatment options.

• Journal of Microbiology
• /
• 제43권5호
• /
• pp.411-416
• /
• 2005

The high-throughput sequencing of microbial genomes has resulted in the relatively rapid accumulation of an enormous amount of genomic sequence data. In this context, the problem posed by the detection of promoters in genomic DNA sequences via computational methods has attracted considerable research attention in recent years. This paper addresses the development of a predictive model, known as the dependence decomposition weight matrix model (DDWMM), which was designed to detect the core promoter region, including the -10 region and the transcription start sites (TSSs), in prokaryotic genomic DNA sequences. This is an issue of some importance with regard to genome annotation efforts. Our predictive model captures the most significant dependencies between positions (allowing for non­adjacent as well as adjacent dependencies) via the maximal dependence decomposition (MDD) procedure, which iteratively decomposes data sets into subsets, based on the significant dependence between positions in the promoter region to be modeled. Such dependencies may be intimately related to biological and structural concerns, since promoter elements are present in a variety of combinations, which are separated by various distances. In this respect, the DDWMM may prove to be appropriate with regard to the detection of core promoter regions and TSSs in long microbial genomic contigs. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our predictive model, we applied 10-fold cross-validation experiments on the 607 experimentally-verified promoter sequences, which evidenced good performance in terms of sensitivity.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• 제85권4호
• /
• pp.341-348
• /
• 2022

Background: An accurate diagnosis in patients with interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) by multidisciplinary discussion (MDD) based on histopathologic information is essential for optimal treatment. Transbronchial lung cryobiopsy (TBLC) has increasingly been used as a diagnostic alternative to surgical lung biopsy. This study aimed to evaluate the appropriate methods of TBLC in patients with ILD in Korea. Methods: A total of 27 patients who underwent TBLC were included. TBLC procedure details and clinical MDD diagnosis using TBLC histopathologic information were retrospectively analyzed. Results: All procedures were performed under general anesthesia with the fluoroscopic guidance in the operation room using flexible bronchoscopy and endobronchial balloon blocker. The median procedure duration was less than 30 minutes, and the median number of biopsies per participant was 2. Most of the bleeding after TBLC was not severe, and the rate of pneumothorax was 25.9%. The most common histopathologic pattern was alternative (48.2%), followed by indeterminate (33.3%) and usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP)/probable UIP (18.5%). In the MDD after TBLC, the most common diagnosis was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (33.3%), followed by smoking-related ILD (25.9%), nonspecific interstitial pneumonia (18.6%), unclassifiable-ILD (14.8%), and others (7.4%). Conclusion: This first single-center experience showed that TBLC using a flexible bronchoscopy and endobronchial balloon blocker with the fluoroscopic guidance under general anesthesia may be a safe and adequate diagnostic method for ILD patients in Korea. The diagnostic yield of MDD was 85.2%. Further studies are needed to evaluate the diagnostic yield and confidence of TBLC.

• 한국도로학회논문집
• /
• 제2권1호
• /
• pp.135-145
• /
• 2000

최근 포장도로의 역학적 상태를 평가하는 방법으로 비파괴 시험인 FWD(Falling Weight Deflectometer)와 탄성파시험이 많이 이용되고 있다. 그러나 기존의 방법들은 공용중인 도로에서 차량을 통제시킨 후 시험을 실시해야 하는 제한이 있다. 그러므로 실제 주행하중 통과시 아스팔트 콘크리트 포장구조체의 물성을 추정하여 잔존수명 예측 및 이동하중에 대한 포장체 거동을 분석하는 경우에는 FWD와 같이 표면처짐으로부터 아스팔트 콘크리트 포장구조체 각 층의 물성을 추정하는 방법의 사용이 곤란하다. 이런 경우에 MDD (Multi-Depth Deflectometer)를 통해 얻어진 깊이별 처짐을 사용하여 아스팔트 콘크리트 포장구조체 각 층의 물성을 역산 추정하고자 본 연구에서는 다층 탄성이론의 반복적인 역산과 충격하중의 영향을 고려하여 깊이별 처짐으로부터 아스팔트 콘크리트 포장구조체 각층의 물성을 추정할 수 있는 역산반복기법을 개발한 후 이를 수치검증하였다. 수치모델을 통하여 검증한 결과, 역산추정된 탄성계수와 실제탄성계수 사이의 오차는 최대 0.114%로 신뢰성 있는 결과를 얻었다. 또한 본 연구에서는 주행하중의 속도에 따른 아스팔트 콘크리트 포장구조체의 동적특성을 파악하여 실제적인 포장구조체의 거동을 분석하고자 수도권 외곽 순환고속도로 김포구간에서 실제 트럭주행을 통한 현장시험을 실시하였다. 주행하중에 대한 아스팔트 콘크리트 포장구조체의 거동을 깊이별 처짐 측정장비인 MDD를 이용하여 깊이별 상대처짐을 측정하고, 주행속도에 따라 포장구조체의 거동을 해석하여 차량의 속도와 포장체 거동을 역학적으로 분석하였고, 주행속도별 층별 동적물성을 개발된 역해석 프로그램으로부터 산정하였다. 주행속도별 동적특성 분석결과, 차량의 주행속도가 증가할수록 깊이별 상대처짐은 감소하였고, 실측된 깊이별 처짐으로부터 포장구조체의 층별 물성을 역해석한 결과 속도가 증가할수록 탄성계수가 증가하였다. 따라서 주행속도가 줄어들수록 포장체의 구조적 능력 저하에 크게 영향을 주는 것을 알 수 있었다.