• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.533-538
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• 2016

Angiogenesis plays an essential role in embryo development, tissue repair, inflammatory diseases, and tumor growth. In the present study, we showed that endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) regulates retinal angiogenesis. Mice that lack eNOS showed growth retardation, and retinal vessel development was significantly delayed. In addition, the number of tip cells and filopodia length were significantly reduced in mice lacking eNOS. Retinal endothelial cell proliferation was significantly blocked in mice lacking eNOS, and EMG-2-induced endothelial cell sprouting was significantly reduced in aortic vessels isolated from eNOS-deficient mice. Finally, pericyte recruitment to endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cell coverage to blood vessels were attenuated in mice lacking eNOS. Taken together, we suggest that the endothelial cell function and blood vessel maturation are regulated by eNOS during retinal angiogenesis.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.29-37
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• 2021

In this paper, we propose a deep learning-based retinal vessel segmentation model for handling multi-scale information of fundus images. we integrate the selective kernel convolution into U-Net-based convolutional neural network. The proposed model extracts and segment features information with various shapes and sizes of retinal blood vessels, which is important information for diagnosing eye-related diseases from fundus images. The proposed model consists of standard convolutions and selective kernel convolutions. While the standard convolutional layer extracts information through the same size kernel size, The selective kernel convolution extracts information from branches with various kernel sizes and combines them by adaptively adjusting them through split-attention. To evaluate the performance of the proposed model, we used the DRIVE and CHASE DB1 datasets and the proposed model showed F1 score of 82.91% and 81.71% on both datasets respectively, confirming that the proposed model is effective in segmenting retinal blood vessels.

• Journal of Korean Medical Science
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• v.33 no.47
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• pp.297.1-297.3
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• 2018

• Korean Journal of Pharmacognosy
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.131-138
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• 2020

Ultraviolet (UV)-induced damage plays a major role in ocular diseases, such as cataracts and retinal degeneration. UV irradiation can generate free radicals including reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are known to cause lipid peroxidation of cellular membranes. It has also been shown that UV can damage DNA directly and induce apoptosis. Rhynchosia volubilis Loureiro (the small black bean or yak-kong, RV) and Beta bulgaris (beet, BB) are used as health supplements. In this study, we explored the protective effects of RV and BB against UVA-induced damage in human pigment epithelial (ARPE-19) cells and in mice. RV and BB mixture and their effective constituents (cyanidin, delphidin, petunidin glycosides) improved cell viability and suppressed intracelluar ROS generation. Phosphorylation of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), Erk1/2 was analyzed by immunoblotting. RV and BB mixture inhibited UVA-induced phosphorylation of p38 MAPK, JNK, Erk1/2 in APRE-19 cells. RV and BB treatment also showed protective effects on ocular damage in UVA-irradiated mice by increasing the levels of endogenous antioxidants such as superoxide dismutase and glutathione. RV and BB have the potential to be used in a range of ocular diseases and conditions, based on in vitro and in vivo study.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.1269-1279
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• 2019

In medical image analysis, segmentation is considered as a vital process since it partitions an image into coherent parts and extracts interesting objects from the image. In this paper, we consider automatic segmentations of OCT retinal images to find six layer boundaries using convolutional neural networks. Segmenting retinal images by layer boundaries is very important in diagnosing and predicting progress of eye diseases including diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and AMD (age-related macular degeneration). We applied well-known CNN architecture for general image segmentation, called Segnet, U-net, and CNN-S into this problem. We also proposed a shortest path-based algorithm for finding the layer boundaries from the outputs of Segnet and U-net. We analysed their performance on public OCT image data set. The experimental results show that the Segnet combined with the proposed shortest path-based boundary finding algorithm outperforms other two networks.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.1082-1088
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• 2009

Fundus images are highly useful in evaluating patients' retinal conditions in diagnosing eye diseases. In particular, vessel regions are essential in diagnosing diabetes and hypertension. In this paper, we used top-hat filter to compensate for non-uniform background. Image contrast was enhanced by using contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) method. Hessian matrix was next applied to detect vessel regions. Results indicate that our method is 1.3% more accurate than matched filter method. Our proposed method is expected to contribute to diagnosing eye diseases.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.163-170
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• 2024

Background: Mechanisms of synaptic plasticity in retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) are complex and the current knowledge cannot explain. Growth and regeneration of dendrites together with synaptic formation are the most important parameters for evaluating the cellular protective effects of various molecules. The effect of ginsenoside Rg1 (Rg1) on the growth of retinal ganglion cell processes has been poorly understood. Therefore, we investigated the effect of ginsenoside Rg1 on the neurite growth of RGCs. Methods: Expression of proteins and mRNA were detected by Western blot and qPCR. cAMP levels were determined by ELISA. In vivo effects of Rg1 on RGCs were evaluated by hematoxylin and eosin, and immunohistochemistry staining. Results: This study found that Rg1 promoted the growth and synaptic plasticity of RGCs neurite by activating the cAMP/PKA/CREB pathways. Meanwhile, Rg1 upregulated the expression of GAP43, Rac1 and PAX6, which are closely related to the growth of neurons. Meantime, H89, an antagonist of PKA, could block this effect of Rg1. In addition, we preliminarily explored the effect of Rg1 on enhancing the glycolysis of RGCs, which could be one of the mechanisms for its neuroprotective effects. Conclusion: Rg1 promoted neurite growth of RGCs through cAMP/PKA/CREB pathways. This study may lay a foundation for its clinical use of optic nerve diseases in the future.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.19-25
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• 2024

The worldwide aging population trend is causing an increase in the incidence of major retinal diseases that can lead to blindness, including glaucoma, cataract, and macular degeneration. In the field of ophthalmology, there is a focused interest in diagnosing diseases that are difficult to prevent in order to reduce the rate of blindness. This study proposes a deep learning approach to accurately diagnose ocular diseases in fundus photographs using less data than traditional methods. For this, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models capable of effective learning with limited data were selected to classify Conventional Fundus Images (CFI) from various ocular disease patients. The chosen CNN models demonstrated exceptional performance, achieving high Accuracy, Precision, Recall, and F1-score values. This approach reduces manual analysis by ophthalmologists, shortens consultation times, and provides consistent diagnostic results, making it an efficient and accurate diagnostic tool in the medical field.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.157-163
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• 2008

Retinal prosthesis is regarded as the most feasible method for the blind caused by retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration. One of the prerequisites for the success of retinal prosthesis is the optimization of the electrical stimuli applied through the prosthesis. Since electrical characteristics of degenerate retina are expected to differ from those of normal retina, we investigated differences of the retinal waveforms in normal and degenerate retina to provide a guideline for the optimization of electrical stimulation for the upcoming prosthesis. After isolation of retina, retinal patch was attached with the ganglion cell side facing the surface of microelectrode arrays (MEA). $8{\times}8$ grid layout MEA (electrode diameter: $30{\mu}m$, electrode spacing: $200{\mu}m$, and impedance: 50 $k{\Omega}$ at 1 kHz) was used to record in-vitro retinal ganglion cell activity. In normal mice (C57BL/6J strain) of postnatal day 28, only short duration (<2 ms) retinal spikes were recorded. In rd/rd mice (C3H/HeJ strain), besides normal spikes, waveform with longer duration (~100 ms), the slow wave component was recorded. We attempted to understand the mechanism of this slow wave component in degenerate retina using various synaptic blockers. We suggest that stronger glutamatergic input from bipolar cell to the ganglion cell in rd/rd mouse than normal mouse contributes the most to this slow wave component. Out of many degenerative changes, we favor elimination of the inhibitory horizontal input to bipolar cells as a main contributor for a relatively stronger input from bipolar cell to ganglion cell in rd/rd mouse.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.364-370
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• 2014

The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) plays an important role in maintaining a healthy retina and the degeneration of RPE caused a number of retinal diseases. The transplantation of RPE has recently become a possible therapeutic modality for retinal degeneration. To transplant RPE cells securely, substrates are essential, and then as a substrate, we fabricated films using silk that has unique mechanical properties and biocompatibility. After the FTIR spectra, contact angle and biodegradation of silk films were confirmed, RPE cells were seeded and the influence of RPE cells on silk films was examined. We measured the cell adhesion, cell viability, morphology and specific mRNA expression by MTT assay, SEM, immunofluorescence and RT-PCR. In this study, we confirmed that attachment, proliferation and phenotype maintenance of RPE cells cultured on silk films were great, and thereby we were able to confirm the potential applications of silk films as tissue engineering carrier for regeneration of retina.