• Health Policy and Management
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.109-119
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• 2014

In accordance with the government's plan to expand the national health insurance (NHI) coverage for severe diseases such as cancer, heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and rare and incurable disease, the diagnostic ultrasound services have been covered by NHI from October 1, 2013. The quality is very important factor in providing diagnostic services because they influence on the diagnosis, treatment, and outcome of diseases. In particular, equipments and health care providers plays an important role in providing qualitative services. The purpose of this paper is to examine the major feature of ultrasound services covered by health security system and to review quality assurance policies in other countries such as Australia, Japan, the USA, and Canada. In addition, we assessed the implication of those policies. We especially put emphasis on the types and qualifications of healthcare professionals and measures to manage equipments. All countries have reviewed on policies to promote the quality such as educational requirements of professionals or restrictions on the duration of equipment usage. Various measures should be implemented to assure the qualitative ultrasound service.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.470-475
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• 2013

The objective of this study was to estimate genetic parameters that are to be used for across-herd genetic evaluations of seed stock pigs at GGP level. Performance data with pedigree information collected from swine breeder farms in Korea were provided by Korea Animal Improvement Association (AIAK). Performance data were composed of final body weights at test days and ultrasound measures of back fat thickness (BF), rib eye area (EMA) and retail cut percentage (RCP). Breeds of swine tested were Landrace, Yorkshire and Duroc. Days to 90 kg body weight (DAYS90) were estimated with linear function of age and ADG calculated from body weights at test days. Ultrasound measures were taken with A-mode ultrasound scanners by trained technicians. Number of performance records after censoring outliers and keeping records pigs only born from year 2000 were of 78,068 Duroc pigs, 101,821 Landrace pigs and 281,421 Yorkshire pigs. Models included contemporary groups defined by the same herd and the same seasons of births of the same year, which was regarded as fixed along with the effect of sex for all traits and body weight at test day as a linear covariate for ultrasound measures. REML estimation was processed with REMLF90 program. Heritability estimates were 0.40, 0.32, 0.21 0.39 for DAYS90, ADG, BF, EMA, RCP, respectively for Duroc population. Respective heritability estimates for Landrace population were 0.43, 0.41, 0.22, and 0.43 and for Yorkshire population were 0.36, 0.38, 0.22, and 0.42. Genetic correlation coefficients of DAYS90 with BF, EMA, or RCP were estimated to be 0.00 to 0.09, -0.15 to -0.25, 0.22 to 0.28, respectively for three breeds populations. Genetic correlation coefficients estimated between BF and EMA was -0.33 to -0.39. Genetic correlation coefficient estimated between BF and RCP was high and negative (-0.78 to -0.85) but the environmental correlation coefficients between these two traits was medium and negative (near -0.35), which describes a highly correlated genetic response to selection on one or the other of these traits. Genetic Trends of all three breeds tend to be towards bigger EMA or greater RCP and shorter DAYS90 especially from generations born after year 2000.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.65 no.2
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• pp.365-376
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• 2023

Pig breeding management directly contributes to the profitability of pig farms, and pregnancy diagnosis is an important factor in breeding management. Therefore, the need to diagnose pregnancy in sows is emphasized, and various studies have been conducted in this area. We propose a computer-aided diagnosis system to assist livestock farmers to diagnose sow pregnancy through ultrasound. Methods for diagnosing pregnancy in sows through ultrasound include the Doppler method, which measures the heart rate and pulse status, and the echo method, which diagnoses by amplitude depth technique. We propose a method that uses deep learning algorithms on ultrasonography, which is part of the echo method. As deep learning-based classification algorithms, Inception-v4, Xception, and EfficientNetV2 were used and compared to find the optimal algorithm for pregnancy diagnosis in sows. Gaussian and speckle noises were added to the ultrasound images according to the characteristics of the ultrasonography, which is easily affected by noise from the surrounding environments. Both the original and noise added ultrasound images of sows were tested together to determine the suitability of the proposed method on farms. The pregnancy diagnosis performance on the original ultrasound images achieved 0.99 in accuracy in the highest case and on the ultrasound images with noises, the performance achieved 0.98 in accuracy. The diagnosis performance achieved 0.96 in accuracy even when the intensity of noise was strong, proving its robustness against noise.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.66-73
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• 2018

Hanwoo is an important livestock resource in Korea. Its genetic improvements of economic traits have mainly focused on the steers in the past. However, there is a great necessity to extend the breed improvement programs to the cows as well. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the effects of various environmental factors (person taking the measurement, region, year of measurement, month of measurement, image interpreter, birth-year and birth-year) on ultrasound measured carcass traits. A total of 27,215 ultrasound measurements of carcass traits were recorded between 2004 and 2012 for 22,620 cows born from 1997 to 2011. The ultrasound measures included backfat thickness (BFT), eye muscle area (EMA), and marbling score (MAR). The mean values for the BFT, EMA and MAR were 4.46 mm, $56.24cm^2$, and 4.12 point, respectively. Seven environmental factors, person taking the measurement, region, year of measurement, month of measurement, image interpreter, birth-year and birth-month, were tested to determine if they had a significant effect on the studied traits using the GLM procedure in SAS. All factors were found to significantly affect all the ultrasound carcass traits in this study. Unlike in previous studies, among the environmental effects, the significant effect of the image interpreter on the ultrasound carcass traits was shown for the first time in this study. These results indicate that future genetic evaluations of ultrasound carcass traits of Hanwoo cows should include all of the above environmental factors as well as the effect from people taking the measurements.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.27 no.9
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• pp.1250-1253
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• 2014

The objective of this study was to estimate the parameters of Gompertz growth curves with the measurements of body conformation, real-time ultrasound longissimus dorsi muscle area (LMA) and backfat thickness (BFT) in Hanwoo cows. The Hanwoo cows (n = 3,373) were born in 97 Hanwoo commercial farms in the 17 cities or counties of Gyeongbuk province, Korea, between 2000 and 2007. A total of 5,504 ultrasound measurements were collected for the cows at the age of 13 to 165 months in 2007 and 2008. Wither height (HW), rump height (HR), the horizontal distance between the top of the hips (WH), and girth of chest (GC) were also measured. Analysis of variance was conducted to investigate variables affecting LMA and BFT. The effect of farm nested in location was included in the statistical model, as well as the effects of HW, HR, WH, and GC as covariates. All of the effects were significant in the analysis of variance for LMA and BFT (p<0.01), except for the HR effect for LMA. The two ultrasound measures and the four body conformation traits were fitted to a Gompertz growth curve function to estimate parameters. Upper asymptotic weights were estimated as $54.0cm^2$, 7.67 mm, 125.6 cm, 126.4 cm, 29.3 cm, and 184.1 cm, for LMA, BFT, HW, HR, WH, and GC, respectively. Results of ultrasound measurements showed that Hanwoo cows had smaller LMA and greater BFT than other western cattle breeds, suggesting that care must be taken to select for thick BFT rather than an increase of only beef yield. More ultrasound records per cow are needed to get accurate estimates of growth curve, which, thus, helps producers select animals with high accuracy.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.268-273
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• 2005

The spirometer is a medical device that measures the instantaneous velocity of the respiratory gas flow capacity. It is used for testing the condition of the lung and patient monitoring. It measures the absolute capacity difference that includes the flow capacity signal. In this paper, by using an ultrasound sensor that reduce+ the error caused by the inertia and pressure it has improved the transmission and receiving signal. This has enabled patients with weak respiratory to use the spirometer. Also, by using the ARM 920T Processor, a precise and prompt detection system was implemented.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.417-420
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• 2005

The spirometer is a medical device that measures the instantaneous velocity of the respiratory gas flow capacity. It is used for testing the condition of the lung and patient monitoring. It measures the absolute capacity difference that includes the flow capacity signal. In this paper, by using an ultrasound sensor that reduce the error caused by the inertia and pressure it has improved the transmission and receiving signal. This has enabled patients with weal respiratory to use the spirometer. Also, by using the embedded hardware system, a precise and prompt detection system was implemented.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.194-201
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• 2005

Since the necessity for the accurate measurement in the field of acoustics, vibration, and ultrasound was internationally increased, CCAUV (Consultative Committee for Acoustics , Ultrasound and Vibration) was created by the CIPM (International Committee for Weights and Measures) in 1998. One of the first activities of CCAUV is the key comparison on 1' standard microphones. The key comparison was done from April. 1999 to April. 2001 and 12 NMIs(National Metrology Institutes) including KRISS (Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science) were participated. The pilot laboratory was the National Physical Laboratory(NPL). The traveling standards were two LSIP(Laboratory Standard 1' Pressure Type) microphones specified in IEC 61094-1 and the calibration frequency ranges covers from 63Hz to 8kHz. In this paper, the analyzed results in the final report were summarized.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.136-141
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• 2015

Purpose: Continuous intravenous access is imperative in emergency situations. Ultrasound-guided internal jugular vein (IJV) catheterization was investigated in critically ill pediatric patients to assess the feasibility of the procedure. Methods: Patients admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit between February 2011 and September 2012 were enrolled in this study. All patients received a central venous catheter from attending house staff under ultrasound guidance. Outcome measures included successful insertion of the catheter, cannulation time, number of cannulation attempts, and number and type of resulting complications. Results: Forty-one central venous catheters (93.2%) were successfully inserted into 44 patients (21 males and 23 females; mean age, $6.54{\pm}1.06$ years). Thirty-three patients (75.0%) had neurological disorders. The right IJV was used for catheter insertion in 34 cases (82.9%). The mean number of cannulation attempts and the mean cannulation time was $1.57{\pm}0.34$ and $14.07{\pm}1.91$ minutes, respectively, the mean catheter dwell time was $14.73{\pm}2.5$ days. Accidental catheter removal was observed in 9 patients (22.0%). Six patients (13.6%) reported complications, the most serious being catheter-related sepsis, which affected 1 patient (2.3%). Other complications included 2 reported cases of catheter malposition (4.6%), and 1 case each of arterial puncture (2.3%), pneumothorax (2.3%), and skin infection (2.3%). Conclusion: The results suggest that ultrasound-guided IJV catheterization can be performed easily and without any serious complications in pediatric patients, even when performed by visiting house staff. Therefore, ultrasound-guided IJV catheterization is strongly recommended for critically ill pediatric patients.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.165-180
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• 2016

Objectives : This study is aimed to report the effectiveness of ultrasound-guided bee venom pharmacopuncture in rotator cuff disease patients. Methods : We treated 4 rotator cuff disease patients with ultrasound-guided bee venom pharmacopuncture and integrative Korean Medical Treatment. The Numeric Rating Scale(NRS), Shoulder Pain And Disability Index(SPADI), and Range Of Motion(ROM) were applied as outcome measures. Results : Comparing before and after treatment, both NRS and SPADI scores were decreased, and ROM was increased in all cases. And adverse events about bee venom pharmacopuncture have not been observed. Conclusion : This study shows ultrasound-guided bee venom pharmacopuncture has a meaningful clinical effect on the improving shoulder pain, disability and ROM.