• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.193-200
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• 2023

Purpose: Crohn's disease (CD) is a chronic, idiopathic bowel disorder that can progress to partial or complete bowel obstruction. At present, there are no reliable diagnostic tests that can readily distinguish between acute inflammatory, purely fibrotic and mixed inflammatory and fibrotic. Our aim is to study the utility of contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) in combination with shear wave elastography (SWE) to differentiate fibrotic from inflammatory strictures in children with obstructive CD of the terminal ileum. Methods: Twenty-five (19 male) children between 2016-2021 with CD of the terminal ileum were recruited into the study. Among these patients, 22 had CEUS kinetic measurements of tissue perfusion, including wash-in slope (dB/sec), peak intensity (dB), time to peak intensity (sec), area under the curve (AUC) (dB sec), and SWE. In total, 11 patients required surgery due to bowel obstruction. Histopathologic analysis was performed by a pathologist who was blinded to the CEUS and SWE test results. Results: Patients that underwent surgical resection had significantly higher mean area under the curve on CEUS compared to patients responsive to medical therapy (p=0.03). The AUC also correlated with the degree of hypertrophy and the percent fibrosis of the muscularis propria, as determined by histopathologic grading (p<0.01). There was no difference in the mean elastography measurements between these two patient groups. Conclusion: CEUS is a useful radiological technique that can help identify pediatric patients with medically refractory obstructive fibrotic strictures of the terminal ileum that should be considered for early surgical resection.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.735-741
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• 2021

Objective: To evaluate circularity as a quantitative shape factor of small renal tumor on computed tomography (CT) in differentiating fat-poor angiomyolipoma (AML) from renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Materials and Methods: In 257 consecutive patients, 257 pathologically confirmed renal tumors (either AML or RCC less than 4 cm), which did not include visible fat on unenhanced CT, were retrospectively evaluated. A radiologist drew the tumor margin to measure the perimeter and area in all the contrast-enhanced axial CT images. In each image, a quantitative shape factor, circularity, was calculated using the following equation: 4 x π x (area ÷ perimeter²). The median circularity (circularity index) was adopted as a representative value in each tumor. The circularity index was compared between fat-poor AML and RCC, and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed. Univariable and multivariable binary logistic regression analysis was performed to determine the independent predictor of fat-poor AML. Results: Of the 257 tumors, 26 were AMLs and 231 were RCCs (184 clear cell RCCs, 25 papillary RCCs, and 22 chromophobe RCCs). The mean circularity index of AML was significantly lower than that of RCC (0.86 ± 0.04 vs. 0.93 ± 0.02, p < 0.001). The mean circularity index was not different between the subtypes of RCCs (0.93 ± 0.02, 0.92 ± 0.02, and 0.92 ± 0.02 for clear cell, papillary, and chromophobe RCCs, respectively, p = 0.210). The area under the ROC curve of circularity index was 0.924 for differentiating fat-poor AML from RCC. The sensitivity and specificity were 88.5% and 90.9%, respectively (cut-off, 0.90). Lower circularity index (≤ 0.9) was an independent predictor (odds ratio, 41.0; p < 0.001) for predicting fat-poor AML on multivariable logistic regression analysis. Conclusion: Circularity is a useful quantitative shape factor of small renal tumor for differentiating fat-poor AML from RCC.

• Korean Circulation Journal
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• v.54 no.7
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• pp.382-394
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• 2024

Background and Objectives: Fractional flow reserve (FFR) is an invasive standard method to identify ischemia-causing coronary artery disease (CAD). With the advancement of technology, FFR can be noninvasively computed from coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA). Recently, a novel simpler method has been developed to calculate onsite CCTA-derived FFR (CT-FFR) with a commercially available workstation. Methods: A total of 319 CAD patients who underwent CCTA, invasive coronary angiography, and FFR measurement were included. The primary outcome was the accuracy of CT-FFR for defining myocardial ischemia evaluated with an invasive FFR as a reference. The presence of ischemia was defined as FFR ≤0.80. Anatomical obstructive stenosis was defined as diameter stenosis on CCTA ≥50%, and the diagnostic performance of CT-FFR and CCTA stenosis for ischemia was compared. Results: Among participants (mean age 64.7±9.4 years, male 77.7%), mean FFR was 0.82±0.10, and 126 (39.5%) patients had an invasive FFR value of ≤0.80. The diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of CT-FFR were 80.6% (95% confidence interval [CI], 80.5-80.7%), 88.1% (95% CI, 82.4-93.7%), 75.6% (95% CI, 69.6-81.7%), 70.3% (95% CI, 63.1-77.4%), and 90.7% (95% CI, 86.2-95.2%), respectively. CT-FFR had higher diagnostic accuracy (80.6% vs. 59.1%, p<0.001) and discriminant ability (area under the curve from receiver operating characteristic curve 0.86 vs. 0.64, p<0.001), compared with anatomical obstructive stenosis on CCTA. Conclusions: This novel CT-FFR obtained from an on-site workstation demonstrated clinically acceptable diagnostic performance and provided better diagnostic accuracy and discriminant ability for identifying hemodynamically significant lesions than CCTA alone.

• Kidney Research and Clinical Practice
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.298-309
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• 2022

Background Hyponatremia overcorrection can result in irreversible neurologic impairment such as osmotic demyelination syndrome. Few prospective studies have identified patients undergoing hypertonic saline treatment with a high risk of hyponatremia overcorrection. Methods We conducted a post hoc analysis of a multicenter, prospective randomized controlled study, the SALSA trial, in 178 patients aged above 18 years with symptomatic hyponatremia (mean age, 73.1 years; mean serum sodium level, 118.2 mEq/L). Overcorrection was defined as an increase in serum sodium levels by >12 or 18 mEq/L within 24 or 48 hours, respectively. Results Among the 178 patients, 37 experienced hyponatremia overcorrection (20.8%), which was independently associated with initial serum sodium level (≤110, 110-115, 115-120, and 120-125 mEq/L with 7, 4, 2, and 0 points, respectively), chronic alcoholism (7 points), severe symptoms of hyponatremia (3 points), and initial potassium level (<3.0 mEq/L, 3 points). The NASK (hypoNatremia, Alcoholism, Severe symptoms, and hypoKalemia) score was derived from four risk factors for hyponatremia overcorrection and was significantly associated with overcorrection (odds ratio, 1.41; 95% confidence interval, 1.24-1.61; p < 0.01) with good discrimination (area under the receiver-operating characteristic [AUROC] curve, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.66-0.85; p < 0.01). The AUROC curve of the NASK score was statistically better compared with those of each risk factor. Conclusion In treating patients with symptomatic hyponatremia, individuals with high hyponatremia overcorrection risks were predictable using a novel risk score summarizing baseline information.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.715-727
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• 2002

The travel time of a flood through a river reach can be estimated by dividing the river length by the mean velocity with which the flood passes downstream. It is closely related to storage constant for the watershed routing of a flood. There are so many empirical formulas available for the estimation of travel time but the results computed generally show great different depending on individual formulas. In the present study, the mean velocity data computed in the process of water surface profile computation for a probability flood through more than 100 different river reaches were collected along with the mean river bed slope of each river reach. And then, a regression analysis is made between the mean river bed slope and the mean velocity, which showed a wide scatter along the mean regression curve, which appears to be due to the different in the magnitude of probability rainfall and size of watershed area. Therefore, methods have been developed to remove the effect of these factors and generalized empirical equation is proposed to relate the mean velocity to mean river bed slope of a reach. Hence, if the mean river bed slope of a river reach is estimated from the longitudinal river profile, the mean velocity can be computed by the generalized equation along with the probability rainfall and watershed area of the river reach under consideration, which leads to the estimation of travel time through a river reach.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.34-40
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• 2008

This paper presents a vision based walking robot control system using hand shape recognition. To recognize hand shapes, the accurate hand boundary needs to be tracked in image obtained from moving camera. For this, we use an active contour model-based tracking approach with mean shift which reduces dependency of the active contour model to location of initial curve. The proposed system is composed of four modules: a hand detector, a hand tracker, a hand shape recognizer and a robot controller. The hand detector detects a skin color region, which has a specific shape, as hand in an image. Then, the hand tracking is performed using an active contour model with mean shift. Thereafter the hand shape recognition is performed using Hue moments. To assess the validity of the proposed system we tested the proposed system to a walking robot, RCB-1. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed system.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.241-246
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• 2010

Purpose: Laparoscopy-assisted gastrectomy (LAG) has become a technically feasible and safe procedure for early gastric cancer treatment. LAG is being increasingly performed in many centers; however, there have been few reports regarding LAG at low-volume centers. The aim of this study was to report our early experience with LAG in patients with gastric cancer at a low-volume center. Materials and Methods: The clinicopathologic data and surgical outcomes of 39 patients who underwent LAG for gastric cancer between April 2007 and March 2010 were retrospectively reviewed. Results: The mean age was 68.3 years. Thirty-one patients had medical co-morbidities. The mean patient ASA score was 2.0. Among the 39 patients, 4 patients underwent total gastrectomy and 35 patients underwent distal gastrectomy. The mean blood loss was 145.4 ml and the mean operative time was 259.4 minutes. The mean time-to-first flatus, first oral intake, and the postoperative hospital stay was 2.8, 3.1, and 9.3 days, respectively. The 30-day mortality rate was 0%. Postoperative complications developed in 9 patients, as follows: anastomotic leakage, 1; wound infection, 1; gastric stasis, 2; postoperative ileus, 1; pneumonia, 1; cerebral infarction, 1; chronic renal failure, 1; and postoperative psychosis, 1. Conclusions: LAG is technically feasible and can be performed safely at a low-volume center, but an experienced surgical team and careful patient selection are necessary. Furthermore, for early mastery of the learning curve for LAG, surgeons need education and training in addition to an accumulation of cases.

• Water for future
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.49-56
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• 1983

A STUDY ON THE ESTIMATION OF THE AVAILABLE WATER RESOURCES IN KOREA The purpose of this study is to present the estimated the total amount of runoff in Korea. The annual mean runoff is estimated by cumulating daily discharges that obtaine from daily stages on the rating curve. The selected five major gaging stations(Indogyo, Gyuam, Jindong, Naju, and Songjeong) to take the daily discharges stand for the five major streams such as the Han River, the Geum River, the Nokdong River, the Yeongsan River and the Seomjin River. The results of this study are as follows; 1) The maximum quantity of the total available water resources is estimated at 26,900 million cubic meters, the minimum is 24,300 million, and the annual mean quantity is 25,600 million 2) The annual mean rate of runoff is evaluated about 58 percent in the five major basins. 3) The annual mean rate of runoff over inland is estimated about 57 percent as a result of assuming the runoff rate of 5 zone about 80 percent, the annual mean rate of runoff is estimated about 56 percent except for V-zone in analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.357-364
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• 2017

The purpose of the study is to develop and validate landslide susceptibility map of Bhotang village development committee, Nepal using FR (Frequency Ration) and SI (Statistical Index) methods. For the purpose, firstly, a landslide inventory map was constructed based on mainly high resolution satellite images available in Google Earth Pro, and rest fieldwork as verification. Secondly, ten conditioning factors of landslide occurrence, namely: altitude, slope, aspect, mean topographic wetness index, landcover, normalized difference vegetation index, dominant soil, distance to river, distance to lineaments and rainfall, were derived and used for the development of landslide susceptibility map in GIS (Geographic Information System) environment. The landslide inventory of total 116 landslides was divided randomly such that 70% were used for training and remaining 30% for validating result by receiver operating characteristics curve analysis. The area under the curve were found to be greater than 0.7 indicating an acceptable susceptibility maps obtained using FR and SI methods in GIS for hilly region of Nepal.

• 한국가스학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1997.09a
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• pp.78-85
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• 1997

Indentation and small punch tests are very powerful methods to monitor the materials reliability since they are very simple, easy and almost non-destructive. First, recently-developed continuous indentation test can provide the more material properties such as hardness, elastic modulus, yield strength, work-hardening exponent, etc., than the conventional hardness test. In our study, the true stress-strain curve was derived from the indentation load-depth curve for spherical indentation. In detail, the strain was able to be obtained from plastic depth/contact radius ratio, and the flow stress was from mean contact pressure through the analysis of elastic-plastic indentation stress field. Secondly, the small punch test was studied to evaluate the fracture toughness and defomation properties such as elastic modulus and yield strength. Like the indentation test, this test can be applied without severe damage of the target structure.