• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.586-597
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• 1999

Background: Many diagnostic tests have developed to diagnose tuberculosis and other mycobacterial diseases but the diagnosis of tuberculosis relies largely on radiological findings and acid-fast staining of sputum and/or culture. Recently, new serologic diagnostic methods, which are safe and easy to use have been introduced into Korea. In this study, the usefulness of serologic diagnosis for tuberculosis and the disease pattern induced variation of the test were evaluated. Methods: Serological assay was performed upon 108 patients with two test kits, the ICT tuberculosis and the BioSign$^{TM}$TB, which are based upon a rapid immunochromatographic assay technique, capable of being interpreted within 15 minutes. The case groups consisted of 61 patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis(36 patients), extrapulmonary tuberculosis(3 patients), or both(22 patients). Control groups consisted of 47 patients with inactive old pulmonary tuberculosis(17 patients), nontuberculous pulmonary disease(16 patients) and nonpulmonary cardiac disease(14 patients). Results : The diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value(PPV) and negative predictive value(NPV) of the ICT tuberculosis were 64.3%, 91.5%, 90.0% and 68.3% respectively. The diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV of the BioSign$^{TM}$TB were 76.5%, 95.3%, 94.1 % and 78.8% respectively. Differences in sensitivity were not significant between patients with previous history of tuberculosis or patients without prior history of tuberculosis. The ICT tuberculosis test showed higher sensitivity in pulmonary tuberculosis patients(76.5%) than extrapulmonary tuberculosis patients(33.3%). There was no difference in sensitivity between patients with or without cavitary lesion by chest X-ray. Conclusion: Considering high specificity and PPV, serologic diagnosis using a rapid immunochromatographic assay device is another helpful diagnostic method in the diagnosis of tuberculosis, when combined with previous diagnostic methods such as chest X-ray, microbiologic study but it has limitation in terms of confirming the diagnosis for tuberculosis as the only diagnostic method because of relatively low sensitivity and NPV.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Service
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.61-66
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• 2017

Calf diarrhea is a disease experienced by almost all of calves after birth and is one of the representative causes of damage to farmers due to mass mortality and of economic losses to them by inhibiting normal growth. In this study, we conducted quick detection of etiologic agents of diarrhea by using a rapid diagnostic kit to multiply diagnose antigens of five etiologic agents of calf diarrhea (rotavirus, coronavirus, Escherichia coli, Cryptosporidium, Giardia) in Hanwoo (Korean native cattle) calves. When the positive antigen proportion of the calf diarrheal feces for each farm was analyzed, rotavirus, coronavirus, Escherichia coli, Cryptosporidium, and Giardia showed antigen positive rates of 0~67%, 0~20%, 0~60%, 0~20%, and 0~67%, respectively. With regard to the antigen positive rate by age in days after birth, 1-week-old calves showed the antigen positive rate of 20% in rotavirus and 20% in Giardia, and 2-week-old calves showed that of 50% in rotavirus. In addition, 4-week-old calves showed the antigen positive rate of 10% in rotavirus, 10% in coronavirus, 10% in Escherichia coli, and 30% in Giardia, and 8-week-old calves showed the antigen positive rate of 17% in coronavirus, 50% in Escherichia coli, 17% in Cryptosporidium, and 33% in Giardia. Based on the results of this study, the etiologic agents of diarrhea in Hanwoo calves for each farm are widely distributed. Although younger than 2-week-old calves were strongly positive for rotavirus, older than 4-week-old calves were highly positive for Giardia and Escherichia coli. In conclusion, we considered that a rapid diagnostic kit is an effective method for quick detection of etiologic agents and would be helpful for cattle farmers and veterinarians to select appropriate therapeutic method.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.155-158
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• 2000

The purpose of this paper is to explain the making procedure and the usage of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for interpretation of radiographic images. The conventional radiograms obtained after the creation of the lesions in the acrylic plates and were enhanced in color. The observer were informed of which tooth to examine, the 'a priori' probability of a lesion present and the approximate diameter of the lesions. The two groups of films were interpreted separately by the same observer using the same rating scale. The following rating scale was used: A; definitely no lesion, B; probably no lesion, C; not sure, D; probably a lesion, and E; definitely a lesion. In analysis, for each observer the diagnostic results in terms of true positive (TP) and false positive (FP) decisions were plotted on a graph. The lowest point on the graph represents the TP and FP when only decisions designated as E according to the rating scale are included. The next point shows the TP and FP values when diagnoses designated as D are added and so forth. By connecting such plot points, a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves is obtained. The area under the curve represents the diagnostic accuracy resulting from a diagnostic performance at pure chance level and a value of 1.0 at perfect performance. This method has been known as an useful method to detect the minute difference for each radiographic technic, each observer and for the different lesion depths.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.170-178
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• 2020

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) continues to be one of the main causative agents of tuberculosis (TB); moreover, the incidence of nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) infections has been rising gradually in both immunocompromised and immunocompetent patients. Precise and rapid detection and identification of MTB and NTM in respiratory specimens are thus important for MTB infection control. Molecular diagnostic methods based on the nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) are known to be rapid, sensitive, and specific compared to the conventional acid-fast bacilli (AFB) smear and mycobacterial culture methods. In the present study, the clinical performances of three commercial molecular diagnostic assays, namely TB/NTM PCR (Biocore), MolecuTech Real MTB-ID^® (YD Diagnostics), and REBA Myco-ID^® (YD Diagnostics), were evaluated with a total of 92 respiratory specimens (22 AFB smear positives and 67 AFB smear negatives). The sensitivity and specificity of TB/NTM PCR were 100% and 75.81%, respectively. The corresponding values of MolecuTech Real MTB-ID^® and REBA Myco-ID^® were 56.52% and 90.32%, and 56.52% and 82.26%, respectively. TB/NTM PCR showed the highest sensitivity; however, the concordant rate was 10% compared with sequence analysis. Although MolecuTech Real MTB-ID^® showed lower sensitivity, its specificity was the highest among the three methods. REBA Myco-ID^® allowed accurate classification of NTM species; therefore, it was the most specific diagnostic method. Of the three PCR-based methods, MolecuTech Real MTB-ID^® showed the best performance. This method is expected to enable rapid and accurate identification of MTB and NTM.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.23 no.11
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• pp.1067-1077
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• 2022

Objective: To determine whether Sonazoid-enhanced ultrasound (SZUS) was noninferior to SonoVue-enhanced ultrasound (SVUS) in diagnosing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) using the same diagnostic criteria. Materials and Methods: This prospective, single-center, noninferiority study (NCT04847726) enrolled 105 at-risk participants (71 male; mean age ± standard deviation, 63 ± 11 years; range, 26-86 years) with treatment-naïve solid hepatic nodules (≥ 1 cm). All participants underwent same-day SZUS (experimental method) and SVUS (control method) for one representative nodule per participant. Images were interpreted by three readers (the operator and two independent readers). All malignancies were diagnosed histopathologically, while the benignity of other lesions was confirmed by follow-up stability or pathology. The primary endpoint was per-lesion diagnostic accuracy for HCC pooled across three readers using the conventional contrast-enhanced ultrasound diagnostic criteria, including arterial phase hyperenhancement followed by mild (assessed within 2 minutes after contrast injection) and late (≥ 60 seconds with a delay of 5 minutes) washout. The noninferiority delta was -10%p. Furthermore, different time delays were compared as washout criteria in SZUS, including delays of 2, 5, and > 10 minutes. Results: A total of 105 lesions (HCCs [n = 61], non-HCC malignancies [n = 19], and benign [n = 25]) were evaluated. Using the 5-minutes washout criterion, per-lesion accuracy of SZUS pooled across the three readers (72.4%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 64.1%-79.3%) was noninferior to that of SVUS (71.4%; 95% CI, 63.1%-78.6%), meeting the statistical criterion for non-inferiority (difference of 0.95%p; 95% CI, -3.8%p-5.7%p). The arterial phase hyperenhancement combined with the 5-minutes washout criterion showed the same sensitivity as that of the > 10-minutes criterion (59.0% vs. 59.0%, p = 0.989), and the specificities were not significantly different (90.9% vs. 86.4%, p = 0.072). Conclusion: SZUS was noninferior to SVUS for diagnosing HCC in at-risk patients using the same diagnostic criteria. No significant improvement in HCC diagnosis was observed by extending the washout time delay from 5 to 10 minutes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2002.11b
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• pp.725-730
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• 2002

This paper presents an efficient modeling method for open cracked beam structures. An equivalent bending spring model is introduced to represent the structural weakening effect in the presence of open cracks. The proposed method adopts the exact dynamic element method (EDEM) to avoid the difficulty and numerical errors in association with re-meshing the structure. The proposed method is rigorously compared with a commercial finite element code. Experiments are also performed to validate the proposed modeling method. Finally, a diagnostic scheme for open cracked beam structures is proposed and demonstrated through a numerical example.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.43 no.3 s.135
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• pp.115-117
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• 2005

The Kato-Katz (KK) method is a well-known method of fecal examination for helminthiases. Its diagnostic sensitivity was found very high for clonorchiasis. The present study evaluated the correlation of Clonorchis sinensis egg counts by the KK method with those by direct smear and formalin-ether (FE) technique. The egg counts obtained by the KK method (Y) were correlated with the counts by direct smear (X) with the equation of Y = 659.4 + 0.266X ($r^2$ = 0.738), but not with those by the FE method. The present study demonstrated that the KK method and direct smear were useful for both qualitative and quantitative diagnosis of clonorchiasis, especially in the field.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.197-204
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• 2003

This paper presents an efficient modeling and dynamic analysis method for open cracked beam structures. An equivalent bending spring model is introduced to represent the structural weakening effect in the presence of cracks. The proposed method adopts the exact dynamic element method (EDEM) to avoid the inconvenience and numerical errors in association with re-meshing the structural model with the crack position changed. The proposed modeling method is validated through a series of simulation and experiments. First, the proposed method is rigorously compared with a commercial finite element code. Then, two kinds of experiments are performed to validate the proposed modeling method. Finally, a diagnostic scheme fur open cracked beam structures is proposed and demonstrated through a numerical example.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.514-517
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• 2003

Oxygen supply is one of the most basic things in human body. Breathing is controlled by the lungs' stationary function and the respiratory center which is in the mesulla oblongata. Nothing but, the external breathing that air movement between the lungs and atmosphere and the internal breathing that cellular air movement between the hemoglobin and a single cell. The adult's number of times of the respirations is about 15∼20 per 1 minute, but it depends ages, exercise, temperature, disease, etc. The important thing in detecting the respiration is that doing it in object person's resting time. Detecting the respiration have to be done without attracting any attention of object person. In present using method is detecting the pulse with catching an object person's wrist and observing the object person's movement. In this paper, we propose the mobile respiration detection diagnostic system using ultrasound sensing method that does not be influenced by the inertia error and the pressure error.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.33-38
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• 2011

Prompt and accurate diagnosis of malaria is the key to prevent disease morbidity and mortality. This study was carried out to evaluate diagnostic performance of 3 commercial rapid detection tests (RDTs), i.e., Malaria Antigen Pf/Pan$^{TM}$, Malaria Ag-Pf$^{TM}$, and Malaria Ag-Pv$^{TM}$ tests, in comparison with the microscopic and PCR methods. A total of 460 blood samples microscopically positive for Plasmodium falciparum (211 samples), P. vivax (218), mixed with P. falciparum and P. vivax (30), or P. ovale (1), and 124 samples of healthy subjects or patients with other fever-related infections, were collected. The sensitivities of Malaria Ag-Pf$^{TM}$ and Malaria Antigen Pf/Pan$^{TM}$ compared with the microscopic method for P. falciparum or P. vivax detection were 97.6% and 99.0%, or 98.6% and 99.0%, respectively. The specificities of Malaria Ag-Pf$^{TM}$, Malaria Ag-Pv$^{TM}$, and Malaria Antigen Pf/Pan$^{TM}$ were 93.3%,98.8%, and 94.4%, respectively. The sensitivities of Malaria Ag-Pf$^{TM}$, Malaria Antigen Pf/Pan$^{TM}$, and microscopic method, when PCR was used as a reference method for P. falciparum or P. vivax detection were 91.8%, 100%, and 96.7%, or 91.9%,92.6%, and 97.3%, respectively. The specificities of Malaria Ag-Pf$^{TM}$, Malaria Ag-Pv$^{TM}$, Malaria Antigen Pf/Pan$^{TM}$, and microscopic method were 66.2%, 92.7%, 73.9%, and 78.2%, respectively. Results indicated that the diagnostic performances of all the commercial RDTs are satisfactory for application to malaria diagnosis.