• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.352-359
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• 2021

Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the geographic distribution of diabetes mortality in Japan and identify socioeconomic factors affecting differences in municipality-specific diabetes mortality. Methods: Diabetes mortality data by year and municipality from 2013 to 2017 were extracted from Japanese Vital Statistics, and the socioeconomic characteristics of municipalities were obtained from government statistics. We calculated the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) of diabetes for each municipality using the empirical Bayes method and represented geographic differences in SMRs in a map of Japan. Multiple linear regression was conducted to identify the socioeconomic factors affecting differences in SMR. Statistically significant socioeconomic factors were further assessed by calculating the relative risk of mortality of quintiles of municipalities classified according to the degree of each socioeconomic factor using Poisson regression analysis. Results: The geographic distribution of diabetes mortality differed by gender. Of the municipality-specific socioeconomic factors, high rates of single-person households and unemployment and a high number of hospital beds were associated with a high SMR for men. High rates of fatherless households and blue-collar workers were associated with a high SMR for women, while high taxable income per-capita income and total population were associated with low SMR for women. Quintile analysis revealed a complex relationship between taxable income and mortality for women. The mortality risk of quintiles with the highest and lowest taxable per-capita income was significantly lower than that of the middle-income quintile. Conclusions: Socioeconomic factors of municipalities in Japan were found to affect geographic differences in diabetes mortality.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.323-342
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• 2021

Personal health records (PHRs) is an electronic medical system that enables patients to acquire, manage and share their health data. Nevertheless, data confidentiality and user privacy in PHRs have not been handled completely. As a fine-grained access control over health data, ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) has an ability to guarantee data confidentiality. However, existing CP-ABE solutions for PHRs are facing some new challenges in access control, such as policy privacy disclosure and dynamic policy update. In terms of addressing these problems, we propose a privacy protection and dynamic share system (PPADS) based on CP-ABE for PHRs, which supports full policy hiding and flexible access control. In the system, attribute information of access policy is fully hidden by attribute bloom filter. Moreover, data user produces a transforming key for the PHRs Cloud to change access policy dynamically. Furthermore, relied on security analysis, PPADS is selectively secure under standard model. Finally, the performance comparisons and simulation results demonstrate that PPADS is suitable for PHRs.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.65-73
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• 2023

Contemporary biomedical data often involve an ill-posed problem owing to small sample size and large number of multi-collinear variables. Partial least squares (PLS) method could be a plausible alternative to an ill-conditioned ordinary least squares. However, in the case of a PLS model that includes a random-effect, how to deal with a random-effect or mixed effects remains a widely open question worth further investigation. In the present study, we propose a modified multivariate PLS method implementing mixed-effect model (PLSM). The advantage of PLSM is its versatility in handling serial longitudinal data or its ability for taking a randomeffect into account. We conduct simulations to investigate statistical properties of PLSM, and showcase its real clinical application to predict treatment outcome of esthetic surgical procedures of human faces. The proposed PLSM seemed to be particularly beneficial 1) when random-effect is conspicuous; 2) the number of predictors is relatively large compared to the sample size; 3) the multicollinearity is weak or moderate; and/or 4) the random error is considerable.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.2082-2102
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• 2024

Accurate segmentation of magnetic resonance (MR) images is crucial for providing doctors with effective quantitative information for diagnosis. However, the presence of weak boundaries, intensity inhomogeneity, and noise in the images poses challenges for segmentation models to achieve optimal results. While deep learning models can offer relatively accurate results, the scarcity of labeled medical imaging data increases the risk of overfitting. To tackle this issue, this paper proposes a novel fuzzy c-means (FCM) model that integrates a deep learning approach. To address the limited accuracy of traditional FCM models, which employ Euclidean distance as a distance measure, we introduce a measurement function based on the skewed normal distribution. This function enables us to capture more precise information about the distribution of the image. Additionally, we construct a regularization term based on the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence of high-confidence deep learning results. This regularization term helps enhance the final segmentation accuracy of the model. Moreover, we incorporate orthogonal basis functions to estimate the bias field and integrate it into the improved FCM method. This integration allows our method to simultaneously segment the image and estimate the bias field. The experimental results on both simulated and real brain MR images demonstrate the robustness of our method, highlighting its superiority over other advanced segmentation algorithms.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.140-145
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• 2012

Objectives : ST8SIA2 (ST8 alpha-N-acetyl-neuraminide alpha-2, 8-sialyltransferase 2 gene) is located at 15q26, a susceptibility locus for schizophrenia. Some previous research had indicated that single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the promoter region of ST8SIA2 were associated with schizophrenia in Japanese and Chinese populations. We investigated the association between SNPs in the promoter region of ST8SIA2 and schizophrenia in the Korean population. Methods : The study subjects were 190 Korean patients with schizophrenia and 190 healthy controls. We performed allelic, genotypic, and haplotypic association analyses for rs3759916, rs3759915 and rs3759914 of ST8SIA2. All genotypes were determined by direct sequencing. Results : In the genotype-based analysis, rs3759914 showed a nominally significant association with schizophrenia under recessive genotypic model (p = 0.047). However, this association did not remain statistically significant after correction for multiple testing. Both allelic and haplotype analyses did not show any significant association. Conclusions : These findings suggest that ST8SIA2 does not play a major role in the susceptibility to schizophrenia in the Korean population. Further studies with a larger number of subjects are required to definitively rule out minor effects of this gene on schizophrenia vulnerability.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.267-276
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• 2020

Purpose: The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) risk calculator is useful in predicting postoperative adverse events. However, its accuracy in specific disorders is unclear. We validated the ACS NSQIP risk calculator in patients with gastric cancer undergoing curative laparoscopic surgery. Materials and Methods: We included 207 consecutive early gastric cancer patients who underwent laparoscopic gastrectomy between January 2018 and January 2019. The preoperative characteristics and risks of the patients were reviewed and entered into the ACS NSQIP calculator. The estimated risks of postoperative outcomes were compared with the observed outcomes using C-statistics and Brier scores. Results: Most of the patients underwent distal gastrectomy with Roux-en-Y reconstruction (74.4%). We did not observe any cases of mortality, venous thromboembolism, urinary tract infection, renal failure, or cardiac complications. The other outcomes assessed were complications such as pneumonia, surgical site infections, any complications requiring re-operation or hospital readmission, the rates of discharge to nursing homes/rehabilitation centers, and the length of stay. All C-statistics were <0 and the highest was for pneumonia (0.65; 95% confidence interval: 0.58-0.71). Brier scores ranged from 0.01 for pneumonia to 0.155 for other complications. Overall, the risk calculator was inconsistent in predicting the outcomes. Conclusions: The ACS NSQIP surgical risk calculator showed low predictive ability for postoperative adverse events after laparoscopic gastrectomy for patients with early gastric cancer. Further research to adjust the risk calculator for these patients may improve its predictive ability.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.11
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• pp.5643-5646
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• 2012

Background and Objectives: Increase of mortality rates of gastric cancer in Iran and the world in recent years reveal necessity of studies on this disease. Here, hazard function for gastric cancer patients was estimated using Wavelet and Kernel methods and some related factors were assessed. Materials and Methods: Ninety-five gastric cancer patients in Fayazbakhsh Hospital between 1996 and 2003 were studied. The effects of age of patients, gender, stage of disease and treatment method on patient's lifetime were assessed. For data analyses, survival analyses using Wavelet method and Log-rank test in R software were used. Results: Nearly 25.3% of patients were female. Fourteen percent had surgery treatment and the rest had treatment without surgery. Three fourths died and the rest were censored. Almost 9.5% of patients were in early stages of the disease, 53.7% in locally advance stage and 36.8% in metastatic stage. Hazard function estimation with the wavelet method showed significant difference for stages of disease (P<0.001) and did not reveal any significant difference for age, gender and treatment method. Conclusion: Only stage of disease had effects on hazard and most patients were diagnosed in late stages of disease, which is possibly one of the most reasons for high hazard rate and low survival. Therefore, it seems to be necessary a public education about symptoms of disease by media and regular tests and screening for early diagnosis.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.543-552
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• 2014

High bandwidth RF such as Bluetooth, GPRS, EDGE, 3GSM, HSDPA is papular in the mobile phone market. A non-conducting metal coating process requires an e-beam deposition of metal, two steps of UV hard coating primer and top coating; however, it is inefficient. We navigate to the electron beam irradiation conditions(resin surface treatment conditions) in the PC/ABS resin injection process. By analyzing the experimental results, we find the optimum development conditions for the electro deposition pre-treatment process and mass production lines using the plasma generated electron beam source.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.49 no.sup1
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• pp.60-67
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• 2016

Background: Coronary angioplasty has been replacing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) because of the relative advantage in terms of recovery time and noninvasiveness of the procedure. Compared to other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, Korea has experienced a rapid increase in coronary angioplasty volumes. Methods: We analyzed changes in procedure volumes of CABG and of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) from three sources: the OECD Health Data, the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) surgery statistics, and the National Health Insurance claims data. Results: We found the ratio of procedure volume of PCI to that of CABG per 100,000 population was 19.12 in 2014, which was more than triple the OECD average of 5.92 for the same year. According to data from NHIS statistics, this ratio was an increase from 11.4 to 19.3 between 2006 and 2013. Conclusion: We found that Korea has a higher ratio of total procedure volumes of PCI with respect to CABG and also a more rapid increase of volumes of PCI than other countries. Prospective studies are required to determine whether this increase in absolute volumes of PCI is a natural response to a real medical need or representative of medical overuse.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.329-336
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• 2020

The study investigated the perception and experience of infection control targeting dental users. During July-August 2020, 198 adults over the age of 20 were surveyed on general characteristics, infection control awareness and experience, and improvement. Analysis was performed using PASW Statistics ver 18.0. The research results, 91% of dental users recognized that infection control was important. In the recognition of infection control were highly investigated oral treatment equipment sterilization, hand hygiene and glove replacement before and after treatment by dental staff. And dental users was relatively low the replacement of disposable gowns and safety glasses for each patient by medical staff. The dental staff are doing well in personal protection and instrument sterilization. Surface disinfection and water quality management needed improvement. It was meaningful to suggest improvement in infection control based on the perception and experience from the perspective of dental users. It is expected to be used as basic data necessary for high-quality medical services through infection control in dental medical institutions.