• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.84 no.3
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• pp.188-199
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• 2021

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common chronic respiratory disease with increased prevalence in the elderly. Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences found at the end of the chromosome, which progressively shorten as cells divide. Telomere length is known to be a molecular marker of aging. This study aimed to assess the relationship between telomere length and the risk of COPD, lung function, respiratory symptoms, and emphysema index in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in Dusty Areas (CODA) cohort. Methods: We extracted DNA from the peripheral blood samples of 446 participants, including 285 COPD patients and 161 control participants. We measured absolute telomere length using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. All participants underwent spirometry and quantitative computed tomography scan. Questionnaires assessing respiratory symptoms and the COPD Assessment Test was filled by all the participants. Results: The mean age of participants at the baseline visit was 72.5±7.1 years. Males accounted for 72% (321 participants) of the all participants. The mean telomere length was lower in the COPD group compared to the non-COPD group (COPD, 16.81±13.90 kb; non-COPD, 21.97±14.43 kb). In COPD patients, 112 (75.7%) were distributed as tertile 1 (shortest), 91 (61.1%) as tertile 2 and 82 (55%) as tertile 3 (longest). We did not find significant associations between telomere length and lung function, exacerbation, airway wall thickness, and emphysema index after adjusting for sex, age, and smoking status. Conclusion: In this study, the relationship between various COPD phenotypes and telomere length was analyzed, but no significant statistical associations were shown.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.370-376
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• 2023

In the underwater image, it is not clear to distinguish the shape of the target due to underwater noise and low resolution. In addition, as an input of deep learning, underwater images require pre-processing and segmentation must be preceded. Even after pre-processing, the target is not clear, and the performance of detection and identification by deep learning may not be high. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish and clarify the target. In this study, the importance of target shadows is confirmed in underwater images, object detection and target area acquisition by shadows, and data containing only the shape of targets and shadows without underwater background are generated. We present the process of converting the shadow image into a 3-mode image in which the target is white, the shadow is black, and the background is gray. Through this, it is possible to provide an image that is clearly pre-processed and easily discriminated as an input of deep learning. In addition, if the image processing code using Open Source Computer Vision (OpenCV)Library was used for processing, the processing speed was also suitable for real-time processing.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.84 no.3
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• pp.745-749
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• 2023

Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker (GSS) disease is a rare hereditary prion disease which is clinically characterized by a progressive cerebellar ataxia followed by cognitive impairment. We report a rare case of GSS disease in a 39-year-old male patient who complained of a progressive gait disturbance followed by dysarthria with cognitive impairment, after five months from the onset of initial symptom. His brain MRI scan revealed multifocal symmetric diffusion restricted lesions with T2/FLAIR hyperintensities in bilateral cerebral cortices, basal ganglia, and thalami. His family members also manifested similar symptoms in their 40-50s, suggesting the possibility of a genetic disease. Finally, he was genetically diagnosed with GSS disease by real-time quaking-induced conversion and prion protein (PRNP) gene sequencing test.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.391-399
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• 2005

Laser-generated ultrasonic inspection system is a non-contact scanning inspection device with high spatial resolution and wide bandwidth. The amplitude of laser-generated ultrasound is varied according to the energy of pulse laser and the surface conditions of an object where the CW measuring laser beam is pointing. In this paper, we correct the generating errors by measuring the energy of pulse laser beam and correct the measuring errors by extracting the gain information of laser interferometer at each time. h dynamic stabilizer is developed to stably scan on the surface of an object for an laser-generated ultrasonic inspection system. The developed system generates ultrasound after adaptively finding the maximum gain time of an laser interferometer and processes the signal in real time after digitization with high speed. In this paper, we describe hardware configuration and control algorithm to build a stable laser-generated ultrasonic inspection system. Also, we confirmed through experiments that the proposed correction method for the generating errors and measuring errors is effective to improve the performance of a system.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.43-49
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• 2007

Purpose: The aim of this study was the clinical implementation of IGRT using KV CBCT for setup correction in radiation therapy. Materials and Methods: We selected 9 patients (3 patient for each region; head, body, pelvis)and acquired 135 CBCT images with CLINAC iX (Varian medical system, USA). During the scan, the required time was measured. We analyzed the result in 3 direction; vertical, longitudinal, lateral. Results: The mean setup errors at the couch position of vertical, lateral, and longitudinal direction were 0.07, 0.12, and 0.1 cm in the head region, 0.3, 0.26, and 0.22 cm in the body region, 0.21, 0.18, and 0.15 cm in the pelvis region respectively. The mean time required for CBCT was $6{\sim}7$ minute. Conclusion: The CBCT on the LINAC provides the capacity for soft tissue imaging in the treatment position and real time monitoring during treatment delivery. With presented workflow, the setup correction within reasonable time for more accurate radiation therapy is possible. And it's image can be very useful for adaptive radiation therapy(ART) in the future with improved image quality.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.43-51
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• 2010

Attenuation coefficients of medical ultrasound not only reflect the pathological information of tissues scanned but also provide the quantitative information to compensate the decay of backscattered signals for other medical ultrasound parameters. Based on the frequency-selective attenuation property of human tissues, attenuation estimation methods in spectral domain have difficulties for real-time implementation due to the complexicity while estimation methods in time domain do not achieve the compensation for the diffraction effect effectively. In this paper, we propose the modified VSA method, which compensates the diffraction with reference phantom in time domain, using adaptive bandpass filters with decreasing center frequencies along depths. The adaptive bandpass filtering technique minimizes the distortion of relative echogenicity of wideband transmit pulses and maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio due to the random scattering, especially at deeper depths. Since the filtering center frequencies change according to the accumulated attenuation, the proposed algorithm improves estimation accuracy and precision comparing to the fixed filtering method. Computer simulation and experimental results using tissue-mimicking phantoms demonstrate that the distortion of relative echogenicity is decreased at deeper depths, and the accuracy of attenuation estimation is improved by 5.1% and the standard deviation is decreased by 46.9% for the entire scan depth.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.122-124
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• 2022

Handling Passenger Traffic is the main challenge for designing an elevator group-control algorithm. Advanced control systems such as Hyundai's Destination Selection System(DSS) lets passengers select the destination by pressing on a selecting screen, and the systems have shown great efficiency. However, the algorithm cannot be applied to the general elevator control system due to the expensive cost of the technology. Often many elevator systems use Nearest Car(NC) algorithms based on the SCAN algorithm, which results in time efficiency problems. In this paper, we designed an elevator group-control algorithm for specific buildings that have approximate timetable data for most of the passengers in the building. In that way, it is possible to predict the destination and the location of passenger calls. The algorithm consists of two parts; the waiting function and the assignment function. They evaluate elevators' actions with respect to the calls and the overall situation. 10 different timetables are created in reference to a real timetable following midday traffic and interfloor traffic. The specific coefficients in the function are set by going through the genetic algorithm process that represents the best algorithm. As result, the average waiting time has shortened by a noticeable amount and the efficiency was close to the known DSS result. Finally, we analyzed the algorithm by evaluating the meaning of each coefficient result from the genetic algorithm.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.1036-1043
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• 2022

This paper discusses about the development of a visual sensor that can be installed in an automatic mooring device to detect the berthing condition of a vessel. Despite controlling the ship's speed and confirming its location to prevent accidents while berthing a vessel, ship collision occurs at the pier every year, causing great economic and environmental damage. Therefore, it is important to develop a visual system that can quickly obtain the information on the speed and location of the vessel to ensure safety of the berthing vessel. In this study, a visual sensor was developed to observe a ship through an image while berthing, and to properly check the ship's status according to the surrounding environment. To obtain the adequacy of the visual sensor to be developed, the sensor characteristics were analyzed in terms of information provided from the existing sensors, that is, detection range, real-timeness, accuracy, and precision. Based on these analysis data, we developed a 3D visual module that can acquire information on objects in real time by conducting conceptual designs of LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) type 3D visual system, driving mechanism, and position and force controller for motion tilting system. Finally, performance evaluation of the control system and scan speed test were executed, and the effectiveness of the developed system was confirmed through experiments.

• Journal of KIISE:Databases
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.42-55
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• 2006

We propose a single Index approach for subsequence matching that supports moving average transform of arbitrary order in time-series databases. Using the single index approach, we can reduce both storage space overhead and index maintenance overhead. Moving average transform is known to reduce the effect of noise and has been used in many areas such as econometrics since it is useful in finding overall trends. However, the previous research results have a problem of occurring index overhead both in storage space and in update maintenance since tile methods build several indexes to support arbitrary orders. In this paper, we first propose the concept of poly-order moving average transform, which uses a set of order values rather than one order value, by extending the original definition of moving average transform. That is, the poly-order transform makes a set of transformed windows from each original window since it transforms each window not for just one order value but for a set of order values. We then present theorems to formally prove the correctness of the poly-order transform based subsequence matching methods. Moreover, we propose two different subsequence matching methods supporting moving average transform of arbitrary order by applying the poly-order transform to the previous subsequence matching methods. Experimental results show that, for all the cases, the proposed methods improve performance significantly over the sequential scan. For real stock data, the proposed methods improve average performance by 22.4${\~}$33.8 times over the sequential scan. And, when comparing with the cases of building each index for all moving average orders, the proposed methods reduce the storage space required for indexes significantly by sacrificing only a little performance degradation(when we use 7 orders, the methods reduce the space by up to 1/7.0 while the performance degradation is only $9\%{\~}42\%$ on the average). In addition to the superiority in performance, index space, and index maintenance, the proposed methods have an advantage of being generalized to many sorts of other transforms including moving average transform. Therefore, we believe that our work can be widely and practically used in many sort of transform based subsequence matching methods.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2009.03a
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• pp.227-236
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• 2009

This study investigates the characteristics of cloud top brightness temperature (CTBT) of WV and IR1 from MTSAT-1R when lightning strikes in South Korea. For temporal and spatial collocations, lightnings, occurred only within ${\pm}5$ minutes from the six minutes added official satellite observation time (e.g., not 0600 UTC but 0606 UTC, considering the real scan time over South Korea), were selected. And the CTBTs corresponding to lightning spots were determined using the nearest pixel within 5 km. The brightness temperature difference (BTD, defined as WV - IR1) between two channels is negatively large when no lightning occurrs, whereas it increases up to positive values (sometimes, +5 K) and the largest frequency distributes around 225 K and 205 K in lightning cases. The probablistic approach for lightning frequency forecast, presented by Machado et al. (2008) in Southern America, was applied over South Korea and new exponential equations, with high coefficients of determination around 0.95 to 0.99, were developed using two channels' BTDs when lightning strikes. Moreover, a case study on 10th June, 2006, the largest number of lightning occurred between 2002 and 2006, was made. The major finding is that lightning activity is closely related to the dramatic decreases in BT and the increases in BTD (esp., equal to or larger than 0 K). Lightning frequency increases exponentially when BTD increases up to 0 K. Therefore, lightning forecast skill will be improved when the integrated strategy (synoptic background and satellite-based CTBT and BTD) is applied. It is believed that this study contributes to the application of the Korean first geostationary satellite (COMS), scheduled to launch at the end of this year, to severe weather detections.