• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.60 no.5
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• pp.353-355
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• 2022

We report a case of an 80-year-old Korean man with chronic cerebral paragonimiasis who presented with progressive memory impairment. He suffered from pulmonary paragonimiasis 60 years ago and has been experiencing epilepsy since the age of 45. He began experiencing memory and cognitive deterioration 3 years ago. He visited the neuropsychiatric department of our hospital to check his symptoms and health from a year ago. Contrast-enhanced brain magnetic resonance imaging study revealed calcifications and cystic lesions encompassing the right temporo-occipital region. Encephalomalatic changes were also observed in the right occipital and temporal areas. The anti-Paragonimus specific IgG antibodies in his serum showed a strong positive response. The neuropsychological test results showed a Global Deterioration Scale of 4 and a Clinical Dementia Rating Scale of 1. The chronic cerebral paragonimiasis lesions in the patient's right temporo-occipital region might induce the dementic change.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.153-159
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• 2022

Plain radiographic analysis is the initial imaging modality for suspected small bowel obstruction. Among the many features that affect the diagnosis of small bowel obstruction (SBO), the presence of gas-filled or fluid-filled small bowel loops is the most salient feature that can be automatized by computer vision algorithms. In this study, we compare three frequently applied pixel-clustering algorithms for extracting gas-filled areas without human intervention. In a comparison involving 40 suspected SBO cases, the Possibilistic C-Means and Fuzzy C-Means algorithms exhibited initialization-sensitivity problems and difficulties coping with low intensity contrast, achieving low 72.5% and 85% success rates in extraction. The Adaptive Resonance Theory 2 algorithm is the most suitable algorithm for gas-filled region detection, achieving a 100% success rate on 40 tested images, largely owing to its dynamic control of the number of clusters.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2003

In this paper, we propose a new method dispersing spatially C(Cyan), M(Magenta), Y(Yellow) instead of K(black) in the bright region. The overlapping of black dots decreases brightness in the dark region, and black dots are very sensitive to human visual system in the bright region. Therefore, to avoid this problem, bright and dark gray region in the color image is considered in the proposed approach. A new method which uses CMY simultaneously in single mask is proposed, and CMY dots are used dispersing spatially for the bright region instead of black dot by this method. And tone curve connection is used to consider the gray level of dark region. In previous method, BNM (Blue Noise Mask) has high granularity and a narrow dynamic range. But the proposed method has the low granularity, wide dynamic range, and high contrast properties. Because the proposed method uses three times dots spatially in the different position than a conventional BNM, it can express more spatial information and a similar gray level compared with BNM.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.865-871
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• 2022

In this paper, we propose a method of extracting prostate region using morphological characteristics of ultra-sonic image of prostate. In the first step of the proposed method, the edge area of the prostate image is extracted. The histogram of ultra-sonic image is used to extract base objects to detect the upper edge of prostate region by altering the contrast of the image, then, the lower edges of the extracted base objects are connected by using monotone cubic spline interpolation to extract the upper edge. Step 2, Otsu's binarization is applied to the region under the extracted upper edge of the prostate ultra-sonic image to extract the lower edge of prostate. In the last step, the upper and the lower edges are connected to extract prostate region and by comparing the extracted region of prostate with the one measured manually, the result showed that the morphological characteristics of prostate in ultrasonic image can be utilized to extract the prostate region.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.118-121
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• 2007

Bulk metallic glass (BMG)/crystalline composites comprising a copper based BMG alloy and crystalline nickel were produced by means of eloctroless plating of nickel on $Cu_{54}Zr_{22}Ti_{18}Ni_6$ BMG powder and subsequent consolidation using spark plasma sintering. The plastic deformation behavior of BMG/crystalline composites was examined by uniaxial compression test at various temperatures in the supercooled liquid region (SLR) of the BMG alloy. The evolution of strain states during uniaxial compression was tackled by microstructure observations. Deformation temperature played an important role in the deformation behavior of BMG/crystalline composites, which was attributed to a strong temperature dependence of the flow stress of the BMG alloy in the SLR. BMG/crystalline composites deformed homogenously in the temperature range where the flow stress of the BMG alloy was close to that of crystalline nickel. In contrast, inhomogeneous deformation was observed in the temperature range where the flow stress of the BMG alloy largely differs from that of crystalline nickel.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.207-212
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• 2017

During the last glacial-interglacial transition, there were multiple intense climatic events such as the Bølling-Allerød warming and Younger Dryas cooling. These events show abrupt and rapid climatic changes. In this study, the climate events and cycles during this interval are examined through wavelet analysis of Arctic and Antarctic ice-core $^{18}O$ and tropical marine $^{14}C$ records. The results show that periods of ~1383-1402, ~1029-1043, ~726-736, ~441-497 and ~202-247 years are dominant in the Arctic region, whereas periods of ~1480, ~765, ~518, ~311, and ~207 years are prominent in the Antarctic TALDICE. In addition, cycles of ~1019, ~515, and ~209 years are distinct in the tropical region. Among these variations, the de Vries cycle of ~202-209 years, correlated with variations in solar activity, was detected globally. In particular, this cycle shows a strong signal in the Antarctic between about 13,000 and 10,500 yr before present (BP). In contrast, the Eddy cycle of ~1019-1043 years was prominent in Greenland and the tropical region, but was not detected in the Antarctic TALDICE records. Instead, these records showed that the Heinrich cycle of ~1480 year was very strong and significant throughout the last glacial-interglacial interval.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.153-159
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• 2003

Localization of mercury compounds was investigated in selective regions of the male reproductive tract using autometallography. The results demonstrated that mercury was observed in Sertoli and Leydig cells in testis, but not in the epithelial cells of rete testis and germ cells. In the efferent ductule, mercury compounds were observed in the cytoplasmic compartments of epithelial cells in the proximal and common regions, while they were observed in the supranuclear cytoplasmic compartments in the conus region. In the epididymis, the compounds were observed in the cytoplasmic compariments of narrow and basal cells, but not in the principal cells of the initial segment. In contrast, the compounds were evenly detected in the cytoplasmic compartments of principal cells in the caput. In the corpus and caudal epididymis, the compounds were observed in the basal region of principal cells. The data shows that mercury is differentially accumulated in the male reproductive tract in a region-specific manner.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.295-300
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• 2005

We introduce an x-ray micro tomography system capable of high resolution imaging of a local region inside a small animal. By combining two kinds of projection data, one from a full field-of-view (FOV) scan of the whole body and the other from a limited FOV scan of the region of interest, we have obtained zoomed-in images of the region of interest without any contrast a nomalies. We have integrated a micro tomography system using a micro-focus x-ray source, a $1248\times1248$ flat-panel x-ray detector, and a precision scan mechanism. Using the cross-sectional images taken with the zoom-in micro tomography system, we measured trabecular thicknesses of femur bones in postmortem rats. To compensate the limited spatial resolution in the zoom-in micro tomography images, we used the fuzzy distance transform for the calculation of the trabecular thickness. To validate the trabecular thickness measurement with the zoom-in micro tomography images, we compared the measurement results with the ones obtained from the conventional micro tomography images of the extracted bone samples.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.107-113
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• 2008

We introduce a rotating-gantry-based x-ray micro-tomography system to be used for small animal imaging studies. It has the zoom-in imaging capability for high resolution imaging of a local region inside the animal subject without any contrast anomalies arising from truncation of the projection data. With the sliding mechanism mounted on the rotating gantry holding the x-ray source and the x-ray detector, we can control the magnification ratio of the x-ray projection data. By combining the projection data from the large field of view (FOV) scan of the whole animal subject and the projection data from the small FOV scan of the region of interest, we can obtain artifact-free zoomed-in images of the region of interest. For the acquisition of x-ray projection data, we use a $1248{\times}1248$ flat-panel x-ray detector with the pixel pitch of 100 mm. It has been experimentally found that the developed system has the spatial resolution of up to 121p/mm when the highest magnification ratio of 5:1 is applied to the zoom-in imaging. We present some in vivo rat femur images to demonstrate utility of the developed system for small animal imaging.

• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2013

Objective: Oocyte-specific homeobox 4 (Obox4) is preferentially expressed in oocytes and plays an important role in the completion of meiosis of oocytes. However, the Obox4 expression pattern has not been reported yet. In this study, we investigated the subcellular localization of Obox4 using a green fluorescent protein (GFP) fusion expression system. Methods: Three regions of Obox4 were divided and fused to the GFP expression vector. The partly deleted homeodomain (HD) regions of Obox4 were also fused to the GFP expression vector. The recombinant vectors were transfected into HEK-293T cells plated onto coated glass coverslips. The transfected cells were stained with 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindol and photographed using a fluorescence microscope. Results: Mutants containing the HD region as well as full-length Obox4 were clearly localized to the nucleus. In contrast, the other mutants of either the N-terminal or C-terminal region without HD had impaired nuclear localization. We also found that the N-terminal and C-terminal of the Obox HD contributed to nuclear localization and the entire HD was necessary for nuclear localization of Obox4. Conclusion: Based on the results of the present study, we demonstrated that the intact HD region of Obox4 is responsible for the nuclear localization of Obox4 protein in cells.