• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.177-185
• /
• 1994

Pharmacologic coronary vasodilation in conjunction with myocardial perfusion scintigraphy has become an alternative to dynamic exercise test for the diagnosis and risk stratification of coronary artery disease, especially in patients who are unable to perform adequate exercise. Dipyridamole and adenosine have been used for pharmacologic stress testing with myocardial perfusion imaging. Adenosine is a potent coronary vasodilator with rapid onset of action, short half-life, near maximal coronary vasodilation and less serious side effects. ST segment depression has been reported in about 7-15% of patients with coronary artery disease receiving dipyridamole in conjunction with myocardial perfusion imaging. The exact cause and clinical significance are not known. In order to evaluate the relationship between adenosine-induced ST segment depression during $^{99m}Tc$-MIBI myocardial perfusion scintigraphy and the severity of coronary artery disease, we performed $^{99m}Tc$-MIBI imaging after intravenous Infusion of adenosine In 120 patients with suspected coronary artery disease. Of the 120 patients, 28 also performed coronary angiography. There were 24 patients with ST segment depression during $^{99m}Tc$-MIBI scintigraphy and 96 patients without ST segment depression. Adenosine was infused Intravenously at a dose of 0.14mg/kg per minute lot 6minutes and $^{99m}Tc$-MIBI was injected at 3 minute. We then com-pared the hemodynamic changes, side effects, scintigraphic and angiographic findings. Heart rate increased $90{\pm}19$ beats/minute in the group with ST depression compared with $80{\pm}16$ beats/minute in the group without ST depression(p<0.05). Baseline systolic blood pressure was significantly higher in the group with ST depression($152{\pm}27$ mmHg) than in the group without 57 depression($140{\pm}21$mmHg, p<0.05). Double product at baseline($10.90{\pm}2.77$ versus $9.55{\pm}2.34\;beats/minute{\times}mmHg$) and during adenosine infusion($12.72{\pm}3.89$ versus $10.83{\pm}2.98\;beats/minute{\times}mmHg$) were significantly higher in the group with ST depression(p<0.05). The incidence of anginal chest pain was also significantly higher in the group with ST depression(ST versus 29%, p<0.0001). The $^{99m}Tc$-MIBI images were abnormal in 23(96%) patients with ST segment depression and 66(69%) patients without ST segment depression(p<0.05). In patients with ST segment depression, there were more reversible perfusion defects than in patients without ST segment depression(83 versus 55%, p<0.05). The number of abnormal segments were significantly higher in the group with ST depression($3.05{\pm}2.01$ versus $1.51{\pm}1.45$, p<0.005). In patients with ST segment depression, there were more segments of reversible perfusion defects than in patients without segment depression($2.15{\pm}2.11$ versus $0.89{\pm}1.24$, p<0.05). There were no differences in the angiographic severity by vessel(p ; NS). We concluded that ST segment depression during $^{99m}Tc$-MIBI myocardial perfusion scintigraphy with Intravenous adenosine is related to the severity of coronary artery disease.

• Restorative Dentistry and Endodontics
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.130-137
• /
• 2007

This in vitro study examined the effect of surface defects on cutting blades on the extent of the cyclic fatigue fracture of HEROShaper Ni-Ti rotary files using fractographic analysis of the fractured surfaces. A total of 45 HEROShaper (MicroMega) Ni-Ti rotary flies with a #30/.04 taper were divided into three groups of 15 each. Group 1 contained new HEROShapers without any surface defects. Group 2 contained HEROShapers with manufacturing defects such as metal rollover and machining marks. Croup 3 contained HEROShapers that had been clinically used for the canal preparation of 4-6 molars A fatigue-testing device was designed to allow cyclic tension and compressive stress on the tip of the instrument whilst maintaining similar conditions to those experienced in a clinic. The level of fatigue fracture time was measured using a computer connected the system. Statistical analysis was performed using a Tukey's test. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used for fractographic analysis of the fractured surfaces. The fatigue fracture time between groups 1 and 2, and between groups 1 and 3 was significantly different (p<0.05) but there was no significant difference between groups 2 and 3 (p>0.05). A low magnification SEM views show brittle fracture as the main initial failure mode At higher magnification, the brittle fracture region showed clusters of fatigue striations and a large number of secondary cracks. These fractures typically led to a central region of catastrophic ductile failure. Qualitatively, the ductile fracture region was characterized by the formation of microvoids and dimpling. The fractured surfaces of the HEROShapers in groups 2 and 3 were always associated with pre-existing surface defects. Typically, the fractured surface in the brittle fracture region showed evidence of cleavage (transgranular) facets across the grains, as well as intergranular facets along the grain boundaries. These results show that surface defects on cutting blades of Ni-Ti rotary files might be the preferred sites for the origin of fatigue fracture under experimental conditions. Furthermore this work demonstrates the utility of fractography in evaluating the failure of Ni-Ti rotary flies.

• Journal of Dental Rehabilitation and Applied Science
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.121-143
• /
• 2010

To investigate the effect of implant types and bone resorption on the fracture characteristics. 4 types of Osstem$^{(R)}$Implant were chosen and classified into external parallel, internal parallel, external taper, internal taper groups. Finite elements analysis was conducted with ANSYS Multi Physics software. Fatigue fracture test was performed by connecting the mold to the dynamic load fatigue testing machine with maximum load of 600N and minimum load of 60N. The entire fatigue test was performed with frequency of 14Hz and fractured specimens were observed with Hitachi S-3000 H scanning electron microscope. The results were as follows: 1. In the fatigue test of 2 mm exposed implants group, Tapered type and external connected type had higher fatigue life. 2. In the fatigue test of 4 mm exposed implants group, Parallel type and external connected types had higher fatigue life. 3. The fracture patterns of all 4 mm exposed implant system appeared transversely near the dead space of the fixture. With a exposing level of 2 mm, all internally connected implant systems were fractured transversely at the platform of fixture facing the abutment. but externally connected ones were fractured at the fillet of abutment body and hexa of fixture or near the dead space of the fixture. 4. Many fatigue striations were observed near the crack initiation and propagation sites. The cleavage with facet or dimple fractures appeared at the final fracture sites. 5. Effective stress of buccal site with compressive stress is higher than that of lingual site with tensile stress, and effective stress acting on the fixture is higher than that of the abutment screw. Also, maximum effective stress acting on the parallel type fixtures is higher. It is careful to use the internal type implant system in posterior area.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.207-224
• /
• 2006

It has been widely known that the seismic piezo-cone penetration test (SCPTu) is one of the most useful techniques for investigating the geotechnical characteristics such as static and dynamic soil properties. As practical applications in Korea, SCPTu was carried out at two sites in Busan and four sites in Incheon, which are mainly composed of alluvial or marine soil deposits. From the SCPTu waveform data obtained from the testing sites, the first arrival times of shear waves and the corresponding time differences with depth were determined using the cross-over method, and the shear wave velocity $(V_S)$ profiles with depth were derived based on the refracted ray path method based on Snell's law. Comparing the determined $V_S$ profile with the cone tip resistance $(q_t)$ profile, both trends of profiles with depth were similar. For the application of the conventional CPTu to earthquake engineering practices, the correlations between $V_S$ and CPTu data were deduced based on the SCPTu results. For the empirical evaluation of $V_S$ for all soils together with clays and sands which are classified unambiguously in this study by the soil behavior type classification index $(I_C)$, the authors suggested the $V_S-CPTu$ data correlations expressed as a function of four parameters, $q_t,\;f_s,\;\sigma'_{v0}$ and $B_q$, determined by multiple statistical regression modeling. Despite the incompatible strain levels of the downhole seismic test during SCPTu and the conventional CPTu, it is shown that the $V_S-CPTu$ data correlations for all soils, clays and sands suggested in this study is applicable to the preliminary estimation of $V_S$ for the soil deposits at a part in Korea and is more reliable than the previous correlations proposed by other researchers.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
• /
• v.38 no.3
• /
• pp.41-52
• /
• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate visitor satisfaction(VS) in waterfront parks in terms of resources, facilities, embodiment of theme(ET), site composition(SC), relaxation activity space(RAS), and dynamic activity space(DAS), which are supply-side components in the planning process of waterfront parks, in order to answer the research question; 'How is visitor satisfaction of waterfront parks determined?' After reviewing the literature on parks and the building process of waterfront parks in Korea, we constructed a conceptual framework and have ascertained a research hypothesis. We had obtained data through a questionnaire survey from 327 visitors at waterfront parks, based on the quota sampling method. We have analyzed the data using the path analysis method. We found that: 1) The direct effects of resources and facilities on VS turned out to be 0.273 and 0.306, respectively while the indirect effects are 0.114, 0.170, respectively. 2) The direct effects of SC, as a component of the planning process on VS, turned out to be 0.243 while that of ET had no affect on VS. The indirect effect of ET and SC on VS turned out to be 0.059 and 0.018, respectively. 3) The direct effects of RAS on VS turned out to be 0.129 while the indirect effects of RAS and DAS on VS turned out to be 0.002 and 0.017, respectively. 4) The size of causal effect, in order, were facilities, resources, SC, RAS, ET, and DAS. 5) Resources and facilities, as a park foundation, compose 64.84 percent of total causal effect while ET and SC have 24.04 percent and RAS and DAS have 11.12 percent, respectively. These research results imply that: 1) Existing waterfront parks should be regenerated with the embodiment of water related theme and with improved facilities for RAS and visitor programs and/or facilities for DAS. 2) The relationship among ET, SC, RAS and DAS should be increased for a significant improvement of VS, and 3) A process-oriented approach turned out to be highly useful for the development of substantive theory and methodology. It is recommended that a structural equation model on waterfront parks be developed using more empirical data and this approach be widely applied for testing its validity.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
• /
• v.35 no.2
• /
• pp.89-99
• /
• 2001

Purpose: In this study, we developed a new software tool for the analysis of renal scintigraphy which can be modified more easily by a user who needs to study new clinical applications, and the appropriateness of the results from our program was studied. Materials and Methods: The analysis tool was programmed with IDL5.2 and designed for use on a personal computer running Windows. For testing the developed tool and studying the appropriateness of the calculated glomerular filtration rate (GFR), $^{99m}Tc$-DTPA was administered to 10 adults in normal condition. In order to study the appropriateness of the calculated mean transit time (MTT), $^{99m}Tc-DTPA\;and\;^{99m}Tc-MAG3$ were administered to 11 adults in normal condition and 22 kidneys were analyzed. All the images were acquired with ORBITOR. the Siemens gamma camera. Results: With the developed tool, we could show dynamic renal images and time activity curve (TAC) in each ROI and calculate clinical parameters of renal function. The results calculated by the developed tool were not different statistically from the results obtained by the Siemens application program (Tmax: p=0.68, Relative Renal Function: p:1.0, GFR: p=0.25) and the developed program proved reasonable. The MTT calculation tool proved to be reasonable by the evaluation of the influence of hydration status on MTT. Conclusion: We have obtained reasonable clinical parameters for the evaluation of renal function with the software tool developed in this study. The developed tool could prove more practical than conventional, commercial programs.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.119-142
• /
• 2015

With the explosive growth in the volume of information, Internet users are experiencing considerable difficulties in obtaining necessary information online. Against this backdrop, ever-greater importance is being placed on a recommender system that provides information catered to user preferences and tastes in an attempt to address issues associated with information overload. To this end, a number of techniques have been proposed, including content-based filtering (CBF), demographic filtering (DF) and collaborative filtering (CF). Among them, CBF and DF require external information and thus cannot be applied to a variety of domains. CF, on the other hand, is widely used since it is relatively free from the domain constraint. The CF technique is broadly classified into memory-based CF, model-based CF and hybrid CF. Model-based CF addresses the drawbacks of CF by considering the Bayesian model, clustering model or dependency network model. This filtering technique not only improves the sparsity and scalability issues but also boosts predictive performance. However, it involves expensive model-building and results in a tradeoff between performance and scalability. Such tradeoff is attributed to reduced coverage, which is a type of sparsity issues. In addition, expensive model-building may lead to performance instability since changes in the domain environment cannot be immediately incorporated into the model due to high costs involved. Cumulative changes in the domain environment that have failed to be reflected eventually undermine system performance. This study incorporates the Markov model of transition probabilities and the concept of fuzzy clustering with CBCF to propose predictive clustering-based CF (PCCF) that solves the issues of reduced coverage and of unstable performance. The method improves performance instability by tracking the changes in user preferences and bridging the gap between the static model and dynamic users. Furthermore, the issue of reduced coverage also improves by expanding the coverage based on transition probabilities and clustering probabilities. The proposed method consists of four processes. First, user preferences are normalized in preference clustering. Second, changes in user preferences are detected from review score entries during preference transition detection. Third, user propensities are normalized using patterns of changes (propensities) in user preferences in propensity clustering. Lastly, the preference prediction model is developed to predict user preferences for items during preference prediction. The proposed method has been validated by testing the robustness of performance instability and scalability-performance tradeoff. The initial test compared and analyzed the performance of individual recommender systems each enabled by IBCF, CBCF, ICFEC and PCCF under an environment where data sparsity had been minimized. The following test adjusted the optimal number of clusters in CBCF, ICFEC and PCCF for a comparative analysis of subsequent changes in the system performance. The test results revealed that the suggested method produced insignificant improvement in performance in comparison with the existing techniques. In addition, it failed to achieve significant improvement in the standard deviation that indicates the degree of data fluctuation. Notwithstanding, it resulted in marked improvement over the existing techniques in terms of range that indicates the level of performance fluctuation. The level of performance fluctuation before and after the model generation improved by 51.31% in the initial test. Then in the following test, there has been 36.05% improvement in the level of performance fluctuation driven by the changes in the number of clusters. This signifies that the proposed method, despite the slight performance improvement, clearly offers better performance stability compared to the existing techniques. Further research on this study will be directed toward enhancing the recommendation performance that failed to demonstrate significant improvement over the existing techniques. The future research will consider the introduction of a high-dimensional parameter-free clustering algorithm or deep learning-based model in order to improve performance in recommendations.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
• /
• v.26 no.3
• /
• pp.323-328
• /
• 2002

Soil-steel structures have been used for the underpass, or drainage systems in the road embankment. This type of structures sustain external load using the correlations with the steel wall and engineered backfill materials. Buried flexible conduits made of corrugated steel plates for the coastal road was tested under vehicle loading to investigate the effects of live load. Testing conduits was a circular structure with a diameter of 6.25m. Live-load tests were conducted on two sections, one of which an attempt was made to reinforce the soil cover with the two layers of geo-gird. Hoop fiber strains of corrugated plate, normal earth pressures exerted outside the structure, and deformations of structure were instrumented during the tests. This paper describes the measured static and dynamic load responses of structure. Wall thrust by vehicle loads increased mainly at the crown and shoulder part of the conduit. However additional bending moment by vehicle loads was neglectable. The effectiveness of geogrid-reinforced soil cover on reducing hoop thrust is also discussed based on the measurements in two sections of the structure. The maximum thrusts at the section with geogrid-reinforced soil cover was 85-92% of those with un-reinforced soil cover in the static load tests of the circular structure; this confirms the beneficial effect of soil cover reinforcement on reducing the hoop thrust. However, it was revealed that the two layers of geogrid had no effect on reducing the overburden pressure at the crown level of structure. The obtained values of DLA decrease approximately in proportion to the increase in soil cover from 0.9m to 1.5m. These values are about 1.2-1.4 times higher than those specified in CHBDC.