• Title/Summary/Keyword: quality measurement tool

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Reliability of Coronary Artery Calcium Severity Assessment on Non-Electrocardiogram-Gated CT: A Meta-Analysis

  • Jin Young Kim;Young Joo Suh;Kyunghwa Han;Byoung Wook Choi
    • Korean Journal of Radiology
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    • v.22 no.7
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    • pp.1034-1043
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    • 2021
  • Objective: The purpose of this meta-analysis was to investigate the pooled agreements of the coronary artery calcium (CAC) severities assessed by electrocardiogram (ECG)-gated and non-ECG-gated CT and evaluate the impact of the scan parameters. Materials and Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane library were systematically searched. A modified Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 tool was used to evaluate the quality of the studies. Meta-analytic methods were utilized to determine the pooled weighted bias, limits of agreement (LOA), and the correlation coefficient of the CAC scores or the weighted kappa for the categorization of the CAC severities detected by the two modalities. The heterogeneity among the studies was also assessed. Subgroup analyses were performed based on factors that could affect the measurement of the CAC score and severity: slice thickness, reconstruction kernel, and radiation dose for non-ECG-gated CT. Results: A total of 4000 patients from 16 studies were included. The pooled bias was 62.60, 95% LOA were -36.19 to 161.40, and the pooled correlation coefficient was 0.94 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.89-0.97) for the CAC score. The pooled weighted kappa of the CAC severity was 0.85 (95% CI = 0.79-0.91). Heterogeneity was observed in the studies (I2 > 50%, p < 0.1). In the subgroup analysis, the agreement between the CAC categorizations was better when the two CT examinations had reconstructions based on the same slice thickness and kernel. Conclusion: The pooled agreement of the CAC severities assessed by the ECG-gated and non-ECG-gated CT was excellent; however, it was significantly affected by scan parameters, such as slice thickness and the reconstruction kernel.

Evaluation of Automatic Image Segmentation for 3D Volume Measurement of Liver and Spleen Based on 3D Region-growing Algorithm using Animal Phantom (간과 비장의 체적을 구하기 위한 3차원 영역 확장 기반 자동 영상 분할 알고리즘의 동물팬텀을 이용한 성능검증)

  • Kim, Jin-Sung;Cho, June-Sik;Shin, Kyung-Sook;Kim, Jin-Hwan;Jeon, Ho-Sang;Cho, Gyu-Seong
    • Progress in Medical Physics
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    • v.19 no.3
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    • pp.178-185
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    • 2008
  • Living donor liver transplantation is increasingly performed as an alternative to cadaveric transplantation. Preoperative screening of the donor candidates is very important. The quality, size, and vascular and biliary anatomy of the liver are best assessed with magnetic resonance (MR) imaging or computed tomography (CT). In particular, the volume of the potential graft must be measured to ensure sufficient liver function after surgery. Preoperative liver segmentation has proved useful for measuring the graft volume before living donor liver transplantations in previous studies. In these studies, the liver segments were manually delineated on each image section. The delineated areas were multiplied by the section thickness to obtain volumes and summed to obtain the total volume of the liver segments. This process is tedious and time consuming. To compensate for this problem, automatic segmentation techniques have been proposed with multiplanar CT images. These methods involve the use of sequences of thresholding, morphologic operations (ie, mathematic operations, such as image dilation, erosion, opening, and closing, that are based on shape), and 3D region growing methods. These techniques are complex but require a few computation times. We made a phantom for volume measurement with pig and evaluated actual volume of spleen and liver of phantom. The results represent that our semiautomatic volume measurement algorithm shows a good accuracy and repeatability with actual volume of phantom and possibility for clinical use to assist physician as a measuring tool.

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Conceptual Analysis of Yangsaeng (양생(Yangsaeng)의 개념 분석)

  • Shin, So-Hong;Kang, Hee-Sook;Shin, Seung-Ho;Lee, Jeong-Won
    • Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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    • v.21 no.7
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    • pp.435-445
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    • 2020
  • This study is a conceptual analysis of Yangsaeng, which is used as a key factor for healthcare in Oriental medicine that identifies the attributes of the concept of Yangsaeng and establishes a clear definition of the term. For this, the Walker and Avant approach to conceptual analysis was employed. The antecedents included the daily routine habits required for a healthy life and reducing the risk factors in daily life by promoting physical and mental health. The results were prolonged healthy life by preventing diseases, enhanced subjective well-being, and improved quality of life. This is defined as a tool for preventing and treating diseases through positive habits in daily life and for pursuing health and quality of life. This study is a re-evaluation of existing Yangsaeng measurement tools to resolve the antecedents of Yangsaeng and proposes a need for research aimed at developing a practical, new, stand-alone tool that allows the attributes of Yangsaeng and Korean culture to be incorporated. This study is significant in that it investigates and defines the attributes that are vague and abstract and can be applied as a practical basis for nursing intervention in the nursing field at the working level.

Effects of a Critical Pathway of Posterolateral Fusion in Patients with Lumbar Spinal Stenosis (측후방융합술을 시행한 요추관협착증 환자의 Critical Pathway 적용효과)

  • Park, Hae-Ok
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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    • v.7 no.2
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    • pp.265-284
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    • 2001
  • The case management has been applied to improve the quality of care and the cost-effectiveness in the most health care institutions. In a way of case management, the critical pathway(CP) has been executed in many acute care settings, focused on the diagnoses with high cost, high volume, and high risk. This study was conducted to develop a case management program using CP as an intervention of patients with lumbar spinal stenosis for the surgery of posterolateral fusion, and to find out the effects of the critical pathway on the quality of nursing care, patient satisfaction as an outcome of care, length of stay and medical charge, and nurses' job satisfaction. At the same time, patients' functional states were checked with the Oswestry Low Back Pain Index, to show that the CP would not decrease the patients' function compared to the control group. The subjects were 25 control patients with a usual operation of lumbar fusion and 25 experimental patients with CP. They were all female, aged $50s{\sim}70s$, admitted in the Orthopedic surgery ward of a university hospital. Also nurses on the floor using CP were asked to respond to measurement tool of job satisfaction before and after the application of CP, and compared with other nurses on the different wards. Data were analyzed with t-test for continuous variables and chi-square for non-parametric variables in addition to the reliability test of the measurement tools. The results of this study were as followings: 1. Patients' functional states The differences in Oswestry scores of the experimental and control groups assessed at preoperation and at discharge were not statistically significant. The change in scores of the experimental group measured at preoperation and at discharge was larger than that of the control group, however the difference was not statistically significant. The results indicate that the CP did not decrease the patients' functional status. 2. The quality of nursing care The total of quality of nursing care given to the experimental group was better than that of the control group(P=.000). In addition, the experimental group showed better scores of quality of every item of care than the control group(P=.000 -.004). 3. Patient satisfaction Patients of the experimental group were not more satisfied with general care than the control group. But they were more satisfied with discharge care of 'explanation about medication, body posture, and brace application' and 'explanation about the adjustment of daily living and exercise during recovery'(P= .047, P=.028). 4. Nurses' job satisfaction Nurses working with the CP showed more job satisfaction than before the CP introduction(P=.048). But the control group of nurses on a different floor showed no change in job satisfaction at the same period of time. 5. Length of stay and medical charge The mean length of stay of the experimental group was shorter than that of the control group without statistical significance. The charge of medication and treatment of the experimental group were smaller than that of the control group(P=.011, P=.000). The results of the study support that the case management using critical pathway enables to improve the quality of care and job satisfaction, to reduce the medical charge, and consequently to increase satisfaction with care. However, the case management should be instituted focusing on the quality improvement of nursing and the client satisfaction, not just for the purpose of cost-effectiveness of health care facilities.

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The effects of audit quality on the relationship between deferred tax assets and discretionary accruals (감사품질이 이연법인세자산과 재량적 발생액의 관계에 미치는 영향)

  • Lee, Hyun-Joo;Park, Sang-Seob
    • Management & Information Systems Review
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    • v.35 no.4
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    • pp.169-184
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    • 2016
  • Deferred tax assets (liability) in a company's financial statements are to reflect the temporary difference between taxable income and accounting income and therefore can provide useful information as a proxy for discretionary accruals. In addition, deferred tax assets allow a company to manage its earnings by reviewing the feasibility of the assets' recognition. As such, this study focused on deferred tax assets to examine their relationship with discretionary accruals, which were measured by a modified Jones model (Dechow et al. 1995), and investigated the impact of audit quality on this relationship. In order to control for the effects of tax rate change and measurement credibility, deferred tax assets of 2,670 non-financial firms from 2009 to 2010 were collected as samples for the study. The results of the empirical analysis are as follows. First, the samples as a whole indicated that deferred tax assets have a negative relationship with discretionary accruals in a general sense, but a high-quality audit did not reveal a significant relationship between them. Second, the 1,379 samples with negative discretionary accruals did not reveal a significant relationship between deferred tax assets and discretionary accruals; however, the result showed a significant negative relationship under a high-quality audit. These findings suggest that in the case of negative discretionary accruals, a high-quality audit restricts an earnings management technique that utilizes deferred tax assets and that the assets can be a useful tool for detecting discretionary accruals. The present study is meaningful in that, unlike previous research, it combined the two contrasting roles of deferred tax assets-that of an earnings management detector and an earnings management tool-to examine their general relationship. The study also suggested that audit quality could influence the usefulness of deferred tax assets in providing information on discretionary accruals.

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Study on Developing Inventory of Students Satisfaction in University (대학교육 만족도 측정도구 개발에 관한 연구)

  • Song, Hong-Jun
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.16 no.8
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    • pp.556-567
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    • 2016
  • The aim of this study is to make an education satisfaction assessment tool in university. For this, the related study, researchers meeting were conducted and 20 university students were involved in checking items, and then inventory items were completed. The pilot test was conducted at university in Choongnam Province for EFA(Exploratory Factor Analysis by using outcome data. From them, 4 sub-areas and 12 factors were consisted. The 4 sub-areas are education method, education contents, education environment, and education outputs. The education method is composed of appropriateness and fairness of classroom activities, the education contents are composed of systemization of education contents, the diversity and quality of education contents, and the effectiveness of education contents. The education environment is configured as educational facilities and environment, educational supporting service and administrative services. For content validity, items which adapted over 0.90 S-CVI : Standard Content Validity Index. To 48 inventory items obtained proper contents validity and reliability, measurement of suitability of verification was conducted. Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ of reliability test has emerged as highly 0.987. In CFA(Complimentary Factor Analysis), CFGFI, CFL, TLI, RMSEA, NFI indexes show a good value, therefore, this assessment tool for educational satisfaction in university is suitable for measuring tool.

A Study on the Consumer's Service Quality Perception Based on the Types of Life-style (소비자의 라이프스타일에 따른 서비스품질 지각 차이에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Yoon-Seo;Lee, Seung-In;Choi, In
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.53-67
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    • 2009
  • For the last decades, service quality has been studied as one of the most important tools for a service company to compete with the other companies. Based on these past researches, it has been agreed that the service quality is a basic and powerful tool to create the competitive advantage. Due to similar reason, many service marketing practitioners have been also focused on the service quality to retain the existing consumers and collect the new consumers. However, service quality is subjectively perceived by individual consumers. Consumer evaluation of service quality can be different from each other. Especially consumers with one life-style may evaluate the service quality differently from the consumers with the other life-styles. Therefore we need to know whether there are differences in service quality perception on the categories of life-style. Life-style refers to a distinctive mode of living in its aggregate and broadest sense. It embodies the patterns that were developed and emerged from the dynamics of living in a society. Since the concept of life-style and its relationship to marketing was introduced in 1963 by William Lazer, methods of measuring the life-style and their application have been developed. Life-style has been usually used to segment the marketplace because it offers marketers a unique and important view of the market. When Life-style is combined with clustering methods, life-style segmentation can generate identifiable whole persons rather than isolated fragment. Life-style segmentation begins with people instead of products and classifies them into different life-style types, each characterized by a unique style of living based on a wide range of activities, interests, and opinions(Plummer, 1974). In this study we applies the life-style segmentation based on the AIO(Activities, Interests, and Opinions) to the consumers of the large discount stores. In Korea, the large discount store market has entered into maturity stage so that the market differentiation strategy is becoming a more critical issue to the marketing practitioners. One of the most important tools to differentiate from the competitors in large discount store market is continuously to provide service of better quality than competitors. This study tries to find answers about the following questions: 1) How can we categorize the consumer life-styles in the large discount store? 2) What are the characteristics of the categorized groups? 3) Are there any differences in service quality perception among the consumers with different life-styles 4) Are there any differences in consumer behavior among them in the large discount store? For the purpose, we collected survey data from consumers and analyzed the data with the SPSS package where we had $X^2$-test, factor analysis, ANOVA, MANOVA, and cluster analysis. The survey was made during one month in the April of 2008. Among the collected 306 copies of questionnaires, 281 copies were chosen as the effective samples for empirical analysis except 25 copies with wrong responses. To identify the life-style patterns, we used the measures employed by Kim and Kwon(1999), where 44 items on a seven-point scale were used to measure factors of the life-style patterns. The Principal Component Method was used for factor extraction, and the VARIMAX orthogonal factor rotation was employed. The 7 items showing low factor loading were eliminated. The results of the factor analysis suggested that nine factors of the life-style patterns were identified as follows: 1) the equality-of-sexes and pursuit-of-independence tendency 2) self-management tendency 3) sociable tendency 4) self-display tendency 5) degree of a dilettante life 6) pursuit-of-information tendency 7) bargain hunter tendency 8) TV preference tendency 9) pursuit-of-leisure tendency. Next, after the K-means cluster analysis was performed with nine factors of the life-style patterns, the life-styles of the respondents were classified into four groups which are named as the 'progressive practicality-oriented group', 'positive success-oriented group', 'sociable ostentation-oriented group', 'stable conservation-oriented group'. The analysis results for usage behavior between the market segments showed statistically significant differences in the frequency of usage, duration time in the store, consumer satisfaction, and loyalty. Also, we tried to investigate whether the large discount store consumers differently perceive the quality of service based upon the types of life-style. To measure the service quality of large discount store, we adapted several measurement models measuring the service quality such as SERVPERF, BCP, R-SERVPERF, R-BCP. MANOVA and One-Way ANOVA were performed to confirm the difference in service quality perception based on the market segments. The results have also shown significant differences between life-style types in service quality perception. These findings show that the large discount store marketers should consider consumer life-style as one of the most important market segments for marketing and understand the difference in service quality perception between life-style types. Our findings give important implications to marketers of large discount stores as well as life-style researchers. First, this study showed there were significant differences in consumer's service quality perception and usage behavior between the types of life-style. It provides evidence that the life-style approach can be a important basis in segmenting the large discount store market and will make consumers perceive the service quality high. Second, most previous researches on service quality have been in aggregate level. However, our results imply that the future research on service quality have to focus on segment level.

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지지적 간호중재가 두경부암 수술환자의 불안, 우울에 미치는 효과

  • Seok, Jeong-Hui;Gang, Eun-Sil
    • Korean Journal of Hospice Care
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    • v.3 no.2
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    • pp.19-33
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    • 2003
  • Cancer causes many crises to cancer patients imcluding physical dysfunction and emotional changes such as anxiety, depression as well as a threat of life, fear of death. As it develops, cancer makes people feel powerlessness due to the losses of their own positions, roles and independence. Although occupying a little proportion among all types of cancer, head and neck cancer may cause a wide range of physical transformation by surgical operation, damage to active functions such as eating and speaking, provoke anxiety and depression after its operation, influencing the quality life of head and neck cancer patients. Thus nursing intervention should be developed to provide supportive nursing for head and neck cancer patients and play roles as competent supporters. This study is a nonequivalent, control group, pretest-posttest, non-synchronized quasi-experimental research design to determine, how nursing intervention has effects on anxiety, depressing of head and neck cancer and operated. They were divided into experimental and comparison groups, each consisting of 20 members. The data were collected during the period from December 1, 1999 to April 11, 2000. Tools of the study included the protocol of supportive nursing intervention which was developed by researcher with reference to a literal review and esperts' advice. The measurement tool of anxiety was consisting of totaled 20 question items which was prepared by Spielberger and translated by Kim et al., the device of depression measurement consisting of total 20 question items which was the output of Song's translation the device of depression self-evaluation from Zung. Data were analyzed using the SPSS/PC 9.0 program. The homogeneity of the subjects were tested using x2-test and t-test. 5 hypoteses were tested using t-test. The results of the study can be summarized as follows. 1.The first hypothesis that the experimental group receiving supportive nursing intervention shows a little anxiety than the control group not receiving supportive nursing intervention was supported(t=3.817, P=.000). 2.The second hypothesis that the experimental group receiving supportive nursing intervention shows a little depression than the control group not receiving supportive nursing intervention was supported(t=8.089, P=.000). Consequently, supportive nursing intervention was found an effective nursing intervention strategy to reduce anxiety and depression of head and neck cancer patients. Providing supportive nursing intervention in nursing practice can enhance the quality of life of those cancer patients.

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CHANGING THE ANIMAL WORLD WITH NIR : SMALL STEPS OR GIANT LEAPS\ulcorner

  • Flinn, Peter C.
    • Proceedings of the Korean Society of Near Infrared Spectroscopy Conference
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    • 2001.06a
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    • pp.1062-1062
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    • 2001
  • The concept of “precision agriculture” or “site-specific farming” is usually confined to the fields of soil science, crop science and agronomy. However, because plants grow in soil, animals eat plants, and humans eat animal products, it could be argued (perhaps with some poetic licence) that the fields of feed quality, animal nutrition and animal production should also be considered in this context. NIR spectroscopy has proved over the last 20 years that it can provide a firm foundation for quality measurement across all of these fields, and with the continuing developments in instrumentation, computer capacity and software, is now a major cog in the wheel of precision agriculture. There have been a few giant leaps and a lot of small steps in the impact of NIR on the animal world. These have not been confined to the amazing advances in hardware and software, although would not have occurred without them. Rapid testing of forages, grains and mixed feeds by NIR for nutritional value to livestock is now commonplace in commercial laboratories world-wide. This would never have been possible without the pioneering work done by the USDA NIR Forage Research Network in the 1980's, following the landmark paper of Norris et al. in 1976. The advent of calibration transfer between instruments, algorithms which utilize huge databases for calibration and prediction, and the ability to directly scan whole grains and fresh forages can also be considered as major steps, if not leaps. More adventurous NIR applications have emerged in animal nutrition, with emphasis on estimating the functional properties of feeds, such as in vivo digestibility, voluntary intake, protein degradability and in vitro assays to simulate starch digestion. The potential to monitor the diets of grazing animals by using faecal NIR spectra is also now being realized. NIR measurements on animal carcasses and even live animals have also been attempted, with varying degrees of success, The use of discriminant analysis in these fields is proving a useful tool. The latest giant leap is likely to be the advent of relatively low-cost, portable and ultra-fast diode array NIR instruments, which can be used “on-site” and also be fitted to forage or grain harvesters. The fodder and livestock industries are no longer satisfied with what we once thought was revolutionary: a 2-3 day laboratory turnaround for fred quality testing. This means that the instrument needs to be taken to the samples rather than vice versa. Considerable research is underway in this area, but the challenge of calibration transfer and maintenance of instrument networks of this type remains. The animal world is currently facing its biggest challenges ever; animal welfare, alleged effects of animal products on human health, environmental and economic issues are difficult enough, but the current calamities of BSE and foot and mouth disease are “the last straw” NIR will not of course solve all these problems, but is already proving useful in some of these areas and will continue to do so.

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Evaluation of Results in Recent Flexible Solar Cell Research Trends via Network Analysis Method (네트워크 분석을 이용한 플렉시블 태양전지 최근 연구동향 분석)

  • Byun, Kisik;Lim, Jae Sung;Park, Jae Woo
    • Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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    • v.19 no.6
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    • pp.600-613
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    • 2018
  • The purpose of this research was to introduce a network analysis method for analyzing the recent trend of the flexible solar cell using a scholarly database. Based on the five years from 2013 to 2017, we used centrality analysis of research papers via measurement of degree centrality, closeness centrality, and betweenness centrality. The results of network analysis show that cell has a centrality value above 0.8, which means that cell is connected with 80% of the total keywords, so it is recognized as the center of flexible solar cell research. The analysis results also indicate that perovskite and copper indium gallium diselenide (CuInGaSe2, or CIGS) are the center of the subgroup for cell. We recognize that the result refers to recent new technology called the CIGS/perovskite tandem solar cell. We hope that the network analysis method will be the appropriate and precise tool for technology and research planning via elaboration and optimization.