• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• 제56권1호
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• pp.19-25
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• 2013

Purpose: Childhood obesity is associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and it has become one of the most common causes of childhood chronic liver diseases which significant as a cause of liver related mortality and morbidity in children in the United States. The development of simpler and easier clinical indices for medical practice is needed to identify advanced hepatic fibrosis in childhood NAFLD instead of invasive method like liver biopsy. FibroScan and aspartate aminotransferase (AST)-to-platelet ratio index (APRI) have been proposed as a simple and noninvasive predictor to evaluate hepatic fibrosis in several liver diseases. APRI could be a good alternative to detect pathologic change in childhood NAFLD. The purpose of this study is to validate the efficacy of APRI for assessing hepatic fibrosis in childhood NAFLD based on FibroScan. Methods: This study included 23 children with NAFLD who underwent FibroScan. Clinical, laboratory and radiological evaluation including APRI was performed. To confirm the result of this study, 6 patients received liver biopsy. Results: Factors associated with hepatic fibrosis (stiffness measurement >5.9 kPa Fibroscan) were triglyceride, AST, alanine aminotransferase, platelet count, APRI and collagen IV. In multivariate analysis, APRI were correlated with hepatic fibrosis (>5.9 kPa). In receiver operating characteristics curve, APRI of meaningful fibrosis (cutoff value, 0.4669; area under the receiver operating characteristics, 0.875) presented sensitivity of 94%, specificity of 66%, positive predictive value of 94%, and negative predictive value of 64%. Conclusion: APRI might be a noninvasive, simple, and readily available method for medical practice to predict hepatic fibrosis of childhood NAFLD.

• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제28권7호
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• pp.859-865
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• 2011

A bio-check unit and health index were developed to provide information on personal health state with easily available noninvasive measurements and surveys. Four health indices were defined such as cardiovascular index, stress index, obesity index, and management index. Methods were developed to calculate health index scores from measured physiological signals and answer of survey questions. In order to evaluate effectiveness of the health indices, a clinical trial was conducted for 362 persons who visited general hospital for annual health inspection. The cardiovascular index showed a good correlation coefficient of 0.685 with the cardiovascular health graded by a medical doctor. The stress index showed a good correlation coefficient of 0.638 with the results of stress questionnaires being used in the public health center. Once the health index function is added in the bio-check unit, the unit may provide useful contents for personal health management.

• 대한핵의학회지
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• 제38권2호
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• pp.198-204
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• 2004

Tumor cell proliferation is considered to be a useful prognostic indicator of tumor aggressiveness and tumor response to therapy but in vitro measurement of individual proliferation is complex and tedious work. PET imaging provides a noninvasive approach to measure tumor growth rate in situ. Early approaches have used $^{18}F$-FDG or methionine to monitor proliferation status. These 2 tracers detect changes in glucose and amino acid metabolism, respectively, and therefore provide only an indirect measure of proliferation status. More recent studies have focused on DNA synthesis itself as a marker of cell proliferation. Cell lines and tissues with a high proliferation rate require high rates of DNA synthesis. $[^{11}C]Thymidine$ was the first radiotracer for noninvasive imaging of tumor proliferation. The short half-life of $^{11}C$ and rapid metabolism of $[^{11}C]Thymidine$ in vivo make the radiotracer less suitable for routing use. Halogenated thymidine analogs such as 5-iodo-2-deoxyuridine (IUdR) can be successfully used as cell proliferation markers for in vitro studies because these compounds are rapidly incorporated into newly synthesized DNA. IUdR has been evaluated as a potential in vivo tracer in nuclear medicing but the image qualify and the calculation of proliferation rates are impaired by its rapid in vivo degradation. Hence, the thymidine analog $3'-deoxy-3'-^{18}F-fluorothymidine$ (FLT) was recently introduced as a stable proliferation marker with a suitable nuclide half-life and stable in vivo. $[^{18}F]FLT$ is phosphorylated to 3-fluorothymidine monophosphate by thymidine kinase 1 and reflects thymidine kinase 1 activity in proliferating cell. $[^{18}F]FLT$ PET is feasible in clincal use and well correlates with cellular proliferation. Choline is a precursor for the biosynthesis of phospholipids (in particular, phosphatidylcholine), which is the essential component of all eukaryotic cell membranes and $[^{11}C]choline$, which is a new marker for cellular proliferation.

• 센서학회지
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.139-147
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• 2006

Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) affect self-assessed quality of life. The prevalence of LUTS is commonly high in the elderly. The purpose of urodynamic investigation is to obtain information on the function of the urinary system. One of the most frequently used measurement procedures in urodynamics is filling and voiding cystometry. But in this system transurethral catheter is used and it makes patients uncomfortable. The aim of this study is to implement the system that could evaluate noninvasively the function of urinary tract. A new system has been developed to analyze urine flow rate and vesical pressure during voiding. These signals were recorded simultaneously and transmitted to a PC. For system evaluation, a model for the lower urinary system of men was constructed. From the evaluation of the model, vesical pressure was correlated with the occlusion degree. In a pilot study with five male subjects, maximum of standard deviation was 1.26, error rate was 3.49 and coefficient of variation was 3.48.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제14권3호
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• pp.273-282
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• 1993

This study is concerned with the temperature dependence characteristics of ultrasound parameters in biological tissues, which are basic on the noninvasive deep body temperature estimation. Used parameters are ultrasonic attenuation coefficient and sound velocity In order to accomplishment our purpose, several signal processing methods were used. Attenua4iorl coefficient was estimated by spectral difference method and sound velocity was estimated by P-P method. And we also examined these methods through a series of IN VITRO experi mentis that used tissue-mimicking phantom samples and biological tissue samples. In order to imitate the biological soft tissue two kinds of phantom samples are used, one is agar phantom sample which is composed of agar, graphite, N-propyl alcohol and distilled water, and the other is fat phantom sample which is composed of pure animal fat. And the ultrasound transmission mode and reflection mode experiments are performed on the pig's spleen, kidney and fat. As a result, it is found that the temperature characteristics are uniform in case of phan- tom samples but not in biological tissues because of complicate wave propagation within them. Consequently, the possibility of temperature measurement using ultrasound on biological tissue is confirmed and its results may contribute to the establishment of reference values of internal temperature measurement of biological tissues.

• 한국멀티미디어학회논문지
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• 제23권11호
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• pp.1388-1395
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• 2020

Daily monitoring of the heart rate can facilitate detection of heart-related diseases in their early stages. Therefore, providing an easy-to-use and noninvasive heart rate monitoring system has been a very popular research topic in the field of healthcare. One of good candidate methods is to use commonly available cameras and extract information that can help to estimate heart rate from a human face. Generally, such information can be retrieved using two different approaches: photoplethysmography (PPG) and ballistocardiography (BCG). PPG exploits slight color changes caused by blood volume variations during heartbeats; thus, it tends to be vulnerable to unstable lighting conditions. BCG exploits subtle head motions caused by pumped blood travelling through the carotid artery during heartbeats; thus, it is vulnerable to the voluntary head movements that are not related to heartbeats. Nevertheless, most related works use either to estimate the heart rate. In this paper, we propose to combine two approaches to be robust to challenging conditions. Specifically, we explore possible ways to combine raw signals obtained from two approaches and verify that the proposed combination shows better accuracies under challenging conditions, such as voluntary head movements and ambient lighting changes.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
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• 제18권2호
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• pp.77-105
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• 2014

Medical imaging techniques have evolved to expand our ability to visualize new contrast information of electrical, optical, and mechanical properties of tissues in the human body using noninvasive measurement methods. In particular, electrical tissue property imaging techniques have received considerable attention for the last few decades since electrical properties of biological tissues and organs change with their physiological functions and pathological states. We can express the electrical tissue properties as the frequency-dependent admittivity, which can be measured in a macroscopic scale by assessing the relation between the time-harmonic electric field and current density. The main issue is to reconstruct spectroscopic admittivity images from 10 Hz to 1 MHz, for example, with reasonably high spatial and temporal resolutions. It requires a solution of a nonlinear inverse problem involving Maxwell's equations. To solve the inverse problem with practical significance, we need deep knowledge on its mathematical formulation of underlying physical phenomena, implementation of image reconstruction algorithms, and practical limitations associated with the measurement sensitivity, specificity, noise, and data acquisition time. This paper discusses a number of issues in electrical tissue property imaging modalities and their future directions.

• 대한전기학회논문지:시스템및제어부문D
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• 제54권8호
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• pp.504-509
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• 2005

This paper presents a new method for obtaining the noninvasive and unrestrained blood pressure readings noninvasively and unrestrainedly using based on reflected wave arrival time(RAT) in the volume of pulse. Since this new method employs only volume pulse, is more rapider and simpler than the method using pulse transit time(PTT) because it only employs the volume of pulse. Blood pressure, PTT and RAT were acquired from 15 healthy subjects. Each subjects were performed forty trials of each measurement. As a result of those trials, the mean error between oscillometric and RAT measurements for systolic blood pressure was $4.55\pm5.64mmHg$. This result showed quite equal with the mean error between oscillometric and PPT measurf:ments, $4.22\pm5.30mmHg$, However, it was not obtained a satisfactory result in the relativity of oscillometric to both RAT and PPT measurements for diastolic blood pressure because of personal difference. To conclude, the method of systolic blood pressure estimation noninvasively and unrestrainedly using by RAT may be used as the method by PTT. Nevertheless, additional studies would be necessary for the RAT/PTT estimation of diastolic blood Pressure measurement.

• 대한간호학회지
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• 제33권1호
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• pp.51-59
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• 2003

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate the relationship between total serum bilirubin(TSB) and transcutaneous bilirubinometry(TcB) in neonates with jaundice. Method: TcB from various sites(forehead, sternum, abdomen, buttock, hand, dorsalis-pedia) was measured using a JM-102 in a total of 102 neonate, 42 female and 60 male, with the mean 37.5 gestational week and the mean 2,903 gram of birth weight, as well as TSB from capillary punctures. Result: The mean bilirubin was 11.73 in serum, 20.55 on the forehead, 17.23 on the sternum, 16.19 on the abdomen, 18.22 on the buttock, 15.83 on the hand and 15.49 on the dorsalis-pedia. The relationship between TSB and TcBs were formulated by simple regression with 0.406 < r < 0.668(p < .000). A higher relationship was revealed between TSB and TCB at the forehead in infants of full-term, ABO incompatibility, and Hb greater than 16 mg/dl(r =0.725, 0.790, and 0.717, retrospectively). Phototherapy altered the measurement of TcB per site. Conclusion: TcB on the forehead is a reliable, noninvasive and convenient measurement of TSB in normal infants(Institutions need to establish quantitative equations representing the specific relationship between TSB and TCB according to the hemodynamic problems of infants such as ABO incompatibility, or low Hb).

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제18권4호
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• pp.429-438
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• 1997

기계식 판막은 매몰식 인공장기에 널리 사용돼 왔으며, 판막의 이상은 환자의 죽음으르 의미한다. 판막의 이상에 영향을 미치는 것은 많은 요소들이 있는데 대표적으로 기계적인 고장과 혈전현상이 있다. 그래서 비침습적으로 이것들을 발견하는 것이 필요하게 된 것이다. 이 논문의 목적은 스펙트럼의 해석과 인공신경망을 이용하여 혈전현상을 발견하는데 있다. 신호의 측정은 공압식 좌심실 보조장치에 장착한 기계식 판막으로부터 마이크로폰과 증폭기를 이용하였다. 디스크 위의 모의 혈전현상과 봉합링의 주위에 혈전현상, 20%, 40% 60%로 자라나는 혈전현상은 펠레세인과 실리콘을 이용하여 제작하였다. 기초 성능 평가를 위해 1KHz 정현파를 인가하여 시스템을 평가하였으며, 정상적인 판막과 5 종류의 혈전현상의 스펙트럼은 혈전현상의 정보를 지닌 개폐시 peak의 신호 파형에서 구하였다. 데이터의 정량적인 해석을 위해 7,000개의 입력 노드와 20개의 은닉층과 1개의 출력층으로 이루어진 인공신경망을 사용하였다. 결론적으로 훈련된 인공신경망을 사용한 결과 정상 판막과 비정상 판막을 판단하는데 90%의 판단능력을 보였다. 이상의 실험을 통해 판막의 이상유무를 신호의 스펙트럼 해석과 인공신경망을 통해 평가할수 있음을 알 수 있었다. 본 논문의 결과는 앞으로 인공장기를 몸속에 지니고 있는 환자에게서 장기의 상태를 지속적으로 감시할 수 있는 기술적 토대를 제공할 것이다.