• Progress in Medical Physics
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.159-166
• /
• 2006

The nonlinearity of hemodynamic response in the somatosensory cortex was investigated with vibrotactile stimulation. The stimuli consisted of a train of 25 Hz, each tasting five different duration periods, 2 s, 4 s, 8 s 12 s, or 16 s with 20 sec periods of no vibration in a pseudo-random order. In order to understand the linearity on the change of stimulus duration for somatosensory cortex, two different tests- checking the linearity of system and finding the impulse response function from gamma-variate function were applied to analyze the hemodynamic response functions. They have produced nearly same results. The BOLD response in the somatosensory cortex Is nonlinear for stimuli of less than 8 seconds, but nearly linear for stimuli greater than 8 seconds. The amplitude, area, TTP, and FWHM as functions of the stimulus duration were calculated and showed a significant downward trend with Increasing stimulus duration for the amplitude and the area. It supports the ranges of nonlinearity are less than 8 seconds.

• Progress in Medical Physics
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.128-133
• /
• 2004

The fMRI response of the somatosensory cortex was investigated with vibrotactile stimulation. Three different frequencies of 8, 15, or 25 Hz were applied in order to mainly focus on the hemodynamic response of Meissner corpuscles sensitive to frequencies of 5-40 Hz. A closed-system, pneumatically-driven, rubber diaphragm was fabricated that overcame many of the limitations of existing vibrotactile devices and produced robust sensory cortex activation in an fMRI experiment. Increasing frequency vs. activation area was analyzed in terms of signal percent change and number of pixels. Our preliminary results indicated that the distribution of the signal percentage change widened and more activated pixels were obtained with higher frequencies.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2004.10a
• /
• pp.1303-1306
• /
• 2004

We developed a symmetrical upper limb motion trainer for chronic hemiparetic subjects. This trainer enabled the practice of a forearm pronatio $n^ination and wrist flexion/extension. In this study, we have used functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) with the developed symmetrical upper limb motion device, to compare brain activation patterns elicited by flexion/extension wrist movements of control and hemiparetic subject group. In control group, contralateral somatosensory cortex(SMC) and bilateral cerebellum were activated by dominant hand movement(Task 1), while bilateral movements by dominant hand(Task 2) activated the SMC in both cerebral hemispheres and ipsilateral cerebellum. However, in hemiparetic subject group, contralateral supplymentary motor area(SMA) was activated by unaffected hand movement(Task 1), while the activation of bilateral movements by unaffected hand(Task 2) showed only SMA in the undamaged hemisphere. This study, demonstrating the ability to accurately measure activation in both sensory and motor cortex, is currently being extended to patients in clinical applications such as the recovery of motor function after stroke.ke.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.22 no.8 s.173
• /
• pp.192-198
• /
• 2005

In this paper, we propose a new training system for the improvement of equilibrium sense using unstable platform. The equilibrium sense, which provides orientation with respect to gravity, is important to integrate the vision, somatosensory and vestibular function to maintain the equilibrium sense of the human body. In order to improve the equilibrium sense, we developed the software program such as a block game, pingpong game using Visual C++. These training system for the equilibrium sense consists of unstable platform, computer interface and software program. The unstable platform was a simple structure of elliptical-type which included tilt sensor, wireless RF module and the device of power supply. To evaluate the effect of balance training, we measured and evaluated the parameters as the moving time to the target, duration to maintain cursor in the target of screen and the error between sine curve and acquired data. As a results, the moving time to the target and duration to maintain cursor in the target was improved through the repeating training of equilibrium sense. It was concluded that this system was reliable in the evaluation of equilibrium sense. This system might be applied to clinical use as an effective balance training system.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
• /
• v.51 no.10
• /
• pp.213-220
• /
• 2014

Korean magnetoencephalography (MEG) system had been developed and installed to hospital. The Korean MEG system contains helmet-shaped arrays of 152 first-order double relaxation oscillation SQUID (DROS) sensor. As a clinical application we have measured and analyzed evoked responses in patients with functional brain disease by outer stimulation as follows; 1) auditory evoked field in patients with hemifacial spasm, 2) somatosensory evoked fields in patients with tumor. We confirm that neuromagnetic data by Korean MEG system can provide useful information for pre-surgical planning or functional brain research.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.837-845
• /
• 2016

Providing a customer with tailored location-based services (LBSs) is a fundamental problem. For location-estimation techniques with radio-based measurements, LBS applications are widely available for mobile devices (MDs), such as smartphones, enabling users to run multi-task applications. LBS information not only enables obtaining the current location of an MD but also provides real-time push-pull communication service. For indoor environments, localization technologies based on radio frequency (RF) pattern-matching approaches are accurate and commonly used. However, to survey radio information for pattern-matching approaches, a considerable amount of time and work is spent in indoor environments. Consequently, in order to reduce the system-deployment cost and computing complexity, this article proposes an indoor positioning approach, which involves using Asus Xtion to facilitate capturing RF signals during an offline site survey. The depth information obtained using Asus Xtion is utilized to estimate the locations and predict the received signal strength (RF information) at uncertain locations. The proposed approach effectively reduces not only the time and work costs but also the computing complexity involved in determining the orientation and RF during the online positioning phase by estimating the user's location by using a smartphone. The experimental results demonstrated that more than 78% of time was saved, and the number of samples acquired using the proposed method during the offline phase was twice as much as that acquired using the conventional method. For the online phase, the location estimates have error distances of less than 2.67 m. Therefore, the proposed approach is beneficial for use in various LBS applications.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.34-37
• /
• 2015

Developing Magnetoencephalography (MEG) based on Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) facilitates to observe the human brain functions in non-invasively and high temporal and high spatial resolution. By using this MEG, we studied alpha rhythm (8-13 Hz) that is one of the most predominant spontaneous rhythm in human brain. The 8-13 Hz rhythm is observed in several sensory region in the brain. In visual related region of occipital, we call to alpha rhythm, and auditory related region of temporal call to tau rhythm, sensorimotor related region of parietal call to mu rhythm. These rhythms are decreased in task related region and increased in task irrelevant regions. This means that these rhythms play a pivotal role of inhibition in task irrelevant region. It may be helpful to attention to the task. In several literature about the alpha-band inhibition in multi-sensory modality experiment, they observed this effect in the occipital and somatosensory region. In this study, we hypothesized that we can also observe the alpha-band inhibition in the auditory cortex, mediated by the tau rhythm. Before that, we first investigated the existence of the alpha and tau rhythm in occipital and temporal region, respectively. To see these rhythms, we applied the visual and auditory stimulation, in turns, suppressed in task relevant regions, respectively.