• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.159-166
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• 2003

Purpose : Streptococcus pneumoniae is part of the normal flora but is also responsible for causing many invasive diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, and sepsis in addition to noninvasive diseases such as otitis in children. Multi-drug resistant strains has raised a lot of concern worldwide and thus the importance of prevention has been emphasized. We have analyzed the current serotypes and antibiotic sensitivity of each serotype as a baseline study to estimate the efficacy of the pneumococcal vaccine in Korean children. Methods : One hundred sixteen cases of pneumococcus cultured at Yonsei Medical Center from September 2001 to January 2003 were analyzed. The serotyping was done with the Quellung reaction and penicillin resistance was tested using the oxacillin disc diffusion method. Results : Pneumococcus were cultured from the sputum in 76 cases(65.5%), from the blood in 13 cases(11.2%), from the ear discharge in 12 cases(10.3%), from the throat in 7 cases(6.0%), from the nasal cavity in 2 cases(1.7%), and one case(0.9%) each from the cerebrospinal fluid, eye discharge, peritoneal fluid, post-operational wound, brain abscess, and catheter tip. Serotyping was possible with 98 cases and the following serotypes were found; 15 cases of type 19F(15.3%), 11 cases of 19A(11.2%), 8 cases of 11A(8.2%), 7 cases each of 6A, 14 and 3(7.1%), 6 cases each of 35, 6B and 23F(6.1%). Eighty two cases(70.7%) out of 116 cases were penicillin resistant and serotypes 19F, 19A, 11A, 23F, 6A, 9V constituted the majority, 48 cases(59.8%). These serotypes showed resistance to cotrimoxazole (74.4%), tetracycline(69.5%), and erythromycin(90.3%) as well. In the 22 cases cultured from children, 19A and 19F were found in 25.0%, 6A, 6B, and 23F in 10.0%, 11A, 14, 19, and 29 in 5.0%. Fifty percent(10/20) of the clinical isolates were represented in the current 7-valent pneumococcal protein conjugate vaccine, and 85%(17/20) when the cross-reacting serotypes were included. Penicillin resistance was found in 86.4%(19/22). Conclusion : The percentage of serotypes included in the 7 valent pneumococcal protein conjugate vaccine found in our study was 40.8% which was less than other prior studies. In anticipation of a change of pneumococcal serotypes, a nationwide multicenter study is needed before the initiation of pneumococcal vaccines in Korea.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.388-393
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• 1999

Background: Correct preoperative staging of esophageal cancer is a prerequisite for adequate treatment. We prospectively compared the accuracy of positron emission tomography (PET) with [fluorine-18]FDG in the staging of esophageal cancer to that of computed tomography (CT). Material and Method: The findings of FDG PET and of chest CT including lower neck and the upper abdomen of 20 biopsy-proven squamous cell carcinoma patients (male, 19; female, 1; mean age, 61) were compared with the pathologic findings obtained from a curative esophagectomy with lymph node dissection. Result: The sensitivities of FDG PET and CT for diagnosis of primary tumor were the same, 90.0% (18/20). Both FDG PET and CT failed to show the primary tumor in 2 of 20 patients; one had a 1cm sized carcinoma in situ and the other had T1 stage cancer. By using the results of the pathologic examinations of 193 removed lymph node groups, we calculated the diagnostic sensitivities, specificities and accuracies of PET and CT (*$\chi$2 p < 0.005). Sensitivity** Specificity Accuracy* PET 55.6%(30/54) 97.1%(135/139) 85.5%(165/193) CT 13.0%(7/54) 98.6%(137/139) 74.6%(144/193) One of four patients with a false-positive for PEThad had active pulmonary tuberculosis. Among the 24 tumor involved lymph node groups, PET failed to show tumor metastasis in 5 lymph node groups abutting the tumor and in 14 lymph node groups located where the decay correction was not performed. Conclusion: Based on the above findings, it is suggested that [F-18]FDG-PET is superior to CT in the detection of nodal metastases and in the staging of patients with esophageal cancer.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.482-489
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• 2010

Background: The purpose of this study was to determine whether hand-measured carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) was a reliable and simple tool that could be used to evaluate the severity of stable coronary artery disease (CAD) with normal high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP). Material and Method: We examined left carotid IMTs in 688 patients with stable CAD and excluded 121 patients with abnormally elevated hs-CRP ($\geq$0.5 mg/dL). We sought to determine the association between risk factors and the severity of stable CAD and carotid IMT in 567 patients who were divided into lower and higher groups based on the median value. Patients underwent a coronary artery angiogram and had at least significant stenosis (>50% of the original luminal diameter involving one or more major coronary artery). Result: Of the 567 patients, 300 (52.9%) were in the lower IMT group and 267 (47.1%) were in the higher IMT group; the median value was 0.76 mm. By multivariable logistic regression analysis, the following groups were different: older age (~49 vs. 70~ years, respectively; OR=6.552), high FBS (~99 vs. 120~ mg/dL; OR=1.713) and severity of CAD (1 vessel vs. 2 vessel disease; OR=1.711, 1 vessel vs. 3 vessel disease; OR=1.714). Conclusion: We conclude that there are correlations between increased carotid IMT and severity of CAD in stable angina patients with normal CRP levels.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.135-143
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• 1994

Background: The cell mediated immunity has an important role in the pathogenesis of tuberculosis. sIL-2R has been known as a sensitive marker of T lymphocyte activation Elevated serum levels of sIL-2R have been found in patients with lymphoproliferative disorders, organ transplantation, autoimmune diseases, and various granulomatous diseases. Elevated levels of sIL-2R have been also found in the serum and pleural fluid of the patients with tuberculosis. To evaluate the diagnostic value of sIL-2R in the differentiation of tuberculous pleurisy and nontuberculous pleurisy. We measured the level of sIL-2R in the sera and pleural fluids of 12 patients with tuberculous pleurisy and 32 patients with nontuberculous pleurisy. Method: Samples of pleural fluid and serum were centrifuged at 2500 rpm for 10 min to remove cell pellets. Soluble IL-2R was measured with a sandwitch enzyme immunoassay using the Cellfree(r) Interleukin-2 Receptor Test kit(T-cell science,Inc. Cambridge, MA). Results: The results obtained were as follows: 1) The sIL-2R level in pleural fluid of the patients with tuberculous pleurisy was higher than that of patients with nontuberculous pleurisy(P<0.005). 2) When the sIL-2R level above 5,000 u/ml in pleural fluid was used as the cut-off value to diagnose tuberculous pleurisy, it had a sensitivity of 84.6% and a specificity of 90.9%. 3) The sIL-2R level in the sera of the patients with tuberculous pleurisy was higher than that of patients with bacterial pleural effusions and normal control group(P<0.05) and there was no difference of levels compared with malignant pleural effusions and transudative pleural effusions(P>0.05). 4) In patients with tuberculous pleurisy, the mean concentration of sIL-2R in pleural fluid was higher than that in serum(P<0.005). Conclusion: These findings suggest that the measurement of elevated levels of pleural fluid sIL-2R in tuberculous pleurisy may be useful in the differential diagnosis between patients with tuberculous pleurisy and nontuberculous pleurisy.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.119-128
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• 2011

The Sensor technology and portable device capability able to collect recent user information and the information about the surrounding environment haven been highly developed. A user can be made use of various contents and the option is also extending with this technology development. In particular, the initial portable device had simply a call function, but now that has evolved into 'the 4th screen' which including movie, television, PC ability. also, in the past, a portable device to provided only the services of a SMS, in recent years, it provided to interactive video service, and it include technology which providing various contents. Also, it is rising as media which leading the consumption of contents, because it can be used anytime, anywhere. However, the contents available for the nature of user's handheld devices are limited. because it is very difficult for making the contents separately according to various device specification. To find a solution to this problem, the study on one contents from several device has been progressing. The contents conversion technology making use of the profile of device out of this study comes to the force and profile study has been progressing for this. Furthermore, Demand for a user is also increased and the study on the technology collecting, analyzing demands has been making active progress. And what is more, Grasping user's demands by making use of this technology and the study on the technology analyzing, providing contents has been making active progress as well. First of all, there is a method making good use of ZigBee, Bluetooth technology about the sensor for gathering user's information. ZigBee uses low-power digital radio for wireless headphone, wireless communication network, and being utilized for smart energy, automatic home system, wireless communication application and wireless sensor application. Bluetooth, as industry standards of PAN(Personal Area Networks), is being made of use of low power wireless device for the technology supporting data transmission such as drawing file, video file among Bluetooth device. With analyzing the collected information making use of this technology, it utilizes personalized service based on network knowledge developed by ETRI to service contents tailor-made for a user. Now that personalized service builds up network knowledge about user's various environments, the technology provides context friendly service constructed dynamically on the basis of this. The contents to service dynamically like this offer the contents that it converses with utilizing device profile to working well. Therefore, this paper suggests the system as follow. It collects the information, for example of user's sensitivity, context and location by using sensor technology, and generates the profile as a means of collected information as sensor. It collects the user's propensity to the information by user's input and event and generates profile in the same way besides the gathered information by sensor. Device transmits a generated profile and the profile about a device specification to proxy server. And proxy server transmits a profile to each profile management server. It analyzes profile in proxy server so that it selects the contents user demand and requests in contents server. Contents server receives a profile of user portable device from device profile server and converses the contents by using this. Original source code of contents convert into XML code using the device profile and XML code convert into source code available in user portable device. Thus, contents conversion process is terminated and user friendly system is completed as the user transmits optimal contents for user portable device.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.48 no.12
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• pp.1362-1369
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• 2005

Purpose : This study aimed to investigate the correlation between the plasma level of N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide(pro-BNP) and several known risk factors influencing outcomes after Fontan operations, and to assess whether pro-BNP levels can be used as predictive risk factors in Fontan operations. Methods : Plasma pro-BNP concentrations were measured in 35 patients with complex cardiac anomalies before catheterization. Cardiac catheterization was performed in all subjects. Mean right atrium pressure, mean pulmonary artery pressure(PAP), and ventricular end-diastolic pressure(EDP) were obtained. Cardiac output and pulmonary vascular resistance were calculated by Fick method. Results : Plasma pro-BNP levels exhibited statistically significant positive correlations with mean PAP(r=0.70, P<0.001), pulmonary vascular resistance(r=0.57, P<0.001), RVEDP(r=0.63, P<0.001), LVEDP(r=0.74, P<0.001), and cardiothoracic ratio(r=0.71, P<0.001). The area under the ROC curve using pro-BNP level to differentiate risk groups in Fontan operations was high : 0.868(95 percent CI, 0.712-1.023, P<0.01). The cutoff value of pro-BNP concentrations for the detection of risk groups in Fontan operations was determined to be 332.4 pg/mL(sensitivity 83.3 percent, specificity 82.7 percent). Conclusion : These data suggest that plasma pro-BNP levels may be used as a predictive risk factor in Fontan operations, and as a guide to determine the mode of therapy during follow-up after Fontan operations.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.173-179
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• 2012

The experiments, which analyze the injury symptoms and diagnose growth conditions utilizing IRVT and analyzing each parts of H. helix L., had been held under a low temperature. Greenhouse and outdoor growing Genus hedera had been prepared and compared with each Genus hedera's peak and bottom leaves' surface temperature under the experimental categories $-6^{\circ}C$ and $-12^{\circ}C$. As results, analyzing the surface thermal property of peak part leaves' of outdoor growing Genus hedera, at experimental categories $-6^{\circ}C$, $-12^{\circ}C$ were ranged from $-2^{\circ}C{\sim}-7^{\circ}C$ and $-2^{\circ}C{\sim}-15^{\circ}C$. On the other hand, the surface thermal property of bottom part leaves at experimental categories $-6^{\circ}C$, $-12^{\circ}C$ were ranged $-2^{\circ}C{\sim}-11^{\circ}C$ and $-1^{\circ}C{\sim}-12^{\circ}C$. It appears that the thermal properties of leaves' surface on $-6^{\circ}C$ peaks and $-12^{\circ}C$ bottoms were more broadband than bottoms and peaks. It means that the peaks were more sensitive than bottoms, as like $-2^{\circ}C{\sim}-15^{\circ}C$, $-1{\sim}-12^{\circ}C$. Moreover, as similar results had seen to leaves surface temperature added to cold wind conditions. How the cold wind damaged the outdoor growing Genus hedera, analyzed the surface thermal property by IRVT data under $0^{\circ}C$, $-2^{\circ}C$, $-4^{\circ}C$ condition, it resulted to $-6.2^{\circ}C$, $-6.8^{\circ}C$, $-7.5^{\circ}C$. It appeared more $3.5{\sim}6.2^{\circ}C$ low temperature than experimental setting point. In addition, each parts thurmal property of peaks and bottoms was not similar, it referred to each parts' sensitivities of low temperature were different on the peak and bottom leaves surface temperature.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.137-144
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of reducing of craniofacial radiation dose using automatic exposure control (AEC) technique in the 64 multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT). We used SOMATOM Definition 64 multi-detector CT, and head of whole body phantom (KUPBU-50, Kyoto Kagaku CO. Ltd). The protocol were helical scan method with 120 kVp, 1 sec of rotation time, 5 mm of slice thickness and increment, 250 mm of FOV, $512{\times}512$ of matrix size, $64{\times}0.625\;mm$ of collimation, and 1 of pitch. The evaluation of dose reducing effect was compared the fixed tube current of 350 with AEC technique. The image quality was measured the noise using standard deviation of CT number. The range of craniofacial bone was to mentum end from calvaria apex, which devided three regions: calvaria~superciliary ridge (1 segment), superciliary ridge~acanthion (2 segment), and acanthion~mentum (3 segment). In the fixed tube current technique, CTDIvol was 57.7 mGy, DLP was $640.2\;mGy{\cdot}cm$ in the all regions. The AEC technique was showed that 1 segment were 30.7 mGy of CTDIvol, 340.7 $mGy{\cdot}cm$ of DLP, 2 segment were 46.5 mGy of CTDIvol, $515.0\;mGy{\cdot}cm$ of DLP, and 3 segment were 30.3 mGy of CTDIvol, $337.0\;mGy{\cdot}cm$ of DLP. The standard deviation of CT number was 2.622 with the fixed tube current technique and 3.023 with the AEC technique in the 1 segment, was 3.118 with the fixed tube current technique and 3.379 with the AEC technique in the 2 segment, was 2.670 with the fixed tube current technique and 3.186 with the AEC technique in the 3 segment. The craniofacial radiation dose using AEC Technique in the 64 MDCT was evaluated the usefulness of reducing for the eye, the parotid and thyroid with high radiation sensitivity particularly.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.12
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• pp.126-134
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• 2017

There have been numerous studies on extracting the R-peak from electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. However, most of the detection methods are complicated to implement in a real-time portable electrocardiograph device and have the disadvantage of requiring a large amount of calculations. R-peak detection requires pre-processing and post-processing related to baseline drift and the removal of noise from the commercial power supply for ECG data. An adaptive filter technique is widely used for R-peak detection, but the R-peak value cannot be detected when the input is lower than a threshold value. Moreover, there is a problem in detecting the P-peak and T-peak values due to the derivation of an erroneous threshold value as a result of noise. We propose a robust R-peak detection algorithm with low complexity and simple computation to solve these problems. The proposed scheme removes the baseline drift in ECG signals using an adaptive filter to solve the problems involved in threshold extraction. We also propose a technique to extract the appropriate threshold value automatically using the minimum and maximum values of the filtered ECG signal. To detect the R-peak from the ECG signal, we propose a threshold neighborhood search technique. Through experiments, we confirmed the improvement of the R-peak detection accuracy of the proposed method and achieved a detection speed that is suitable for a mobile system by reducing the amount of calculation. The experimental results show that the heart rate detection accuracy and sensitivity were very high (about 100%).

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.519-524
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• 2010

Purpose : To determine the efficacy of the N-terminal fragment of B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) as a useful diagnostic method in children with incomplete Kawasaki disease (KD). Methods : Ninety-six patients who were diagnosed as having KD between January 2008 and June 2009 were enrolled in the study. American Heart Association recommendations for diagnosis were used, and patients were divided into the complete KD and incomplete KD groups. Blood tests including NT-proBNP were performed on admission day. Nineteen patients who had other febrile diseases other than KD were enrolled as control. Results : Thirty-three patients (34%) had incomplete KD. Change in the lips and oral cavity and conjunctivitis were the most common clinical features, but their frequency was lower than complete KD (76% vs 98%, 76% vs 90%). Patients with incomplete KD exhibited significantly higher NT-proBNP level than that of control ($1,407.7{\pm}1633.5pg/mL$ vs $126.2{\pm}135.5pg/mL$, $P$<0.001). An NT-proBNP cutoff value of 158 pg/mL provided a sensitivity of 81% and a specificity of 74% for diagnosis of incomplete KD. Conclusion : NT-proBNP assay can be clinically useful for the diagnosis of incomplete KD, if the patient has persistent fever, change in the lips and oral cavity, and conjunctivitis, and if the patient with those symptoms is suspected to have incomplete KD.