Effective Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection of a Huge Esophageal Liposarcoma: A Case Report.

This case report presents the successful endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) of a well-differentiated esophageal liposarcoma in a 51-year-old male with persistent dysphagia. The cause was initially diagnosed as a 10 cm pedunculated lesion extending from the upper esophageal sphincter to the mid-esophagus. An ESD was chosen over traditional surgery because it is less invasive. The procedure involved a precise submucosal injection and excision with special techniques to manage bleeding from a central vessel. Despite the extraction challenges owing to the size of the lesion, it was successfully removed orally. A histopathological examination of the 8.3×4.2×2.3 cm specimen revealed the characteristic features of a well-differentiated liposarcoma, including MDM2 and CDK4 positivity. The follow-up revealed no recurrence, and active surveillance has been performed since. This report highlights the versatility of ESD in treating significant esophageal tumors and provides evidence for its efficacy as a minimally invasive alternative.

Region-Based Static Video Stitching for Reduction of Parallax Distortion.

In this paper, we propose a semantic segmentation-based static video stitching method to reduce parallax and misalignment distortion for sports stadium scenes with dynamic foreground objects. First, video frame pairs for stitching are divided into segments of different classes through semantic segmentation. Region-based stitching is performed on matched segment pairs, assuming that segments of the same semantic class are on the same plane. Second, to prevent degradation of the stitching quality of plain or noisy videos, the homography for each matched segment pair is estimated using the temporally consistent feature points. Finally, the stitched video frame is synthesized by stacking the stitched matched segment pairs and the foreground segments to the reference frame plane by descending order of the area. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by comparing the subjective quality, geometric distortion, and pixel distortion of video sequences stitched using the proposed and conventional methods. The proposed method is shown to reduce parallax and misalignment distortion in segments with plain texture or large parallax, and significantly improve geometric distortion and pixel distortion compared to conventional methods.

Multi-Frame Based Homography Estimation for Video Stitching in Static Camera Environments.

In this paper, a multi-frame based homography estimation method is proposed for video stitching in static camera environments. A homography that is robust against spatio-temporally induced noise can be estimated by intervals, using feature points extracted during a predetermined time interval. The feature point with the largest blob response in each quantized location bin, a representative feature point, is used for matching a pair of video sequences. After matching representative feature points from each camera, the homography for the interval is estimated by random sample consensus (RANSAC) on the matched representative feature points, with their chances of being sampled proportional to their numbers of occurrences in the interval. The performance of the proposed method is compared with that of the per-frame method by investigating alignment distortion and stitching scores for daytime and noisy video sequence pairs. It is shown that alignment distortion in overlapping regions is reduced and the stitching score is improved by the proposed method. The proposed method can be used for panoramic video stitching with static video cameras and for panoramic image stitching with less alignment distortion.

A comparative study of the trends in epidemiological aspects of Lyme disease infections in Korea and Japan, 2011-2016.

Lyme disease (LD) is one of the most prevalent tick-borne emerging infections in North America, Europe, and far Eastern Asia including Korea and Japan. This study was undertaken with the aim of a comparative and quantitative analysis of the epidemiological aspects of LD infections in Korea and Japan from 2011 to 2016. The raw data analyzed in this study were obtained from the websites of the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), Korea, and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID), Japan. In total 65 cases of LD were observed with a cumulative incidence rate (CIR) of 0.22 per million population in Korea from 2011 to 2016. During the same period in Japan, there were 75 cases of LD with a CIR of 0.10 [significantly higher than that in Korea (p <0.01)]. Further, the results showed that in Korea, LD incidence was slightly higher in women than in men; but in Japan, the case was reverse, with incidence much higher in men than women. The proportion of cases differed significantly by age-specific adjusted groups within both countries (p <0.01). In both the countries, the incidence of LD was highest among those aged ≤20 yr (93.8% cases in Korea, and 94.7% cases in Japan). Cases peaked in autumn (46.7% of total cases) in Korea and in summer (60.0%) in Japan (p <0.01). The counties in rural areas had a significantly higher proportion of cases than the capital cities in both the countries (p <0.01). The study indicates that LD in Korea and Japan is an emerging zoonosis, and pose a serious risk to public health. The results underscore the continued emergency of LD and provide a basis for targeting prevention campaigns to a population with increasing incidence. Proper information, education and communication (IEC) activities can be helpful in reducing the spread of infection.

Comparative Study on the Epidemiological Trends and Aspects of Murine Typhus in Korea in the Last Decade (2006-2015).

INTRODUCTION: In this study, we undertook a retrospective analysis of the epidemiological aspects and risk factors of murine typhus (MT) in Korea in the last decade (2006-2015). MATERIALS AND METHODS: MT infections in Korea using a total of 411 cases obtained from the Diseases Web Statistical System of the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention. RESULTS: In a total of 411 MT infection cases, the cumulative incidence rate was 0.08/100,000 populations. Men were slightly more infected by MT as compared to women (51.3% vs. 48.7%), and a higher incidence of MT was observed in people aged over 40 years (93.4%; P < 0.01). The seasonal pattern of outbreaks revealed that most infections occurred from October to November (69.1% of the total cases) (P < 0.01). Significantly more outbreaks occurred in the southern part (53.5%) of the Korean peninsula as compared to its northern (33.3%) and central (10.7%) parts, as well as the Jeju Island (1.0%) (P < 0.01). In addition, the number of MT infections was significantly higher in rural and sea-village (87.6%) than in urban areas (12.4%; P < 0.01). CONCLUSION: In conclusion, the rapid reemergence of MT outbreaks can be minimized through health education, and a strong enforcement of control measures against rats and their ectoparasites could markedly reduce the transmission of this infection to humans in high-risk areas.

International Travel and Exotic Dengue Fever in South Korea from 2006 to 2015.

We analyzed reported dengue fever (DF) cases and DF-relevant characteristics in South Korea from 2006 to 2015. A total of 1,260 DF notifications were obtained during the study period that were presumably introduced from endemic foreign countries. The nationwide cumulative incidence rate (CIR) of DF was 0.25 per 100,000 population; CIR of DF among overseas travelers was 0.93. CIRs of overseas male and female travelers were 1.13 and 0.87, respectively. CIR of overseas travelers aged 20-39 years was the highest. More men (61.9%) were infected with the dengue virus than women (38.1%, P<0.01). Individuals aged 20-39 years were most infected than those of other ages (58.4%, P<0.01). About a third of reported DF cases occurred between June and November. Most of the imported DF cases were associated with traveling in Southeast Asia (86.1%). The incidence of DF was highly correlated with the total number of overseas travelers (Pearson correlation r=0.842, P<0.01). The number of reported patients with DF has been increasing in the last decade, and DF is associated with international travel. To prevent dengue virus infections, greater attention should be paid to individuals who are planning to travel to Southeast Asia.

A Comparative Study of the Trends of Imported Dengue Cases in Korea and Japan 2011 - 2015.

BACKGROUND: Dengue is a mosquito-borne febrile disease that represents a major public health problem in tropical and subtropical areas. Even though Korea and Japan are not the regions where dengue is epidemic, there have been many imported cases in both countries, and in increasing numbers. A better understanding of the characteristics of the prevalence of dengue and the recent trends in these neighboring countries may provide information to promote improvement and control strategies for both. The present study investigated the epidemiological status of imported dengue cases in Korea and Japan between 2011 and 2015, and compared their characteristics. METHODS: We analyzed the annual transition of prevalence, geographic origin of dengue infection, and seasonal distribution of occurrence. The raw data on dengue cases in Korea were obtained from the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention infectious diseases surveillance website and Korean Statistical Information Service website. Data on dengue cases in Japan were obtained from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Japan's Infectious Disease Surveillance Center website. RESULTS: There were 893 reported cases in Korea and 1,054 in Japan between 2011 and 2015. Cumulative incidence per 100,000 overseas travelers from Japan did not substantially differ from that for Korea (1.22 vs. 1.16, respectively), despite Japan's population being roughly 2.5 times larger. These results suggest Koreans engage in overseas travel more than Japanese. For Korea and Japan, Southeast Asia was the region accounting for the most cases of infection (89.4% vs. 75.4%, respectively). Notably, the Philippines and Indonesia were, respectively, the leading origin countries for Korean (38.1%) and Japanese (23.3%) cases. Seasonal distribution shows August and September were the months in which the largest number of cases occurred in Korea and Japan, respectively. These differences evidently derive from characteristics of travel destinations and timing of holidays. CONCLUSION: Based on the recent increasing trend in imported dengue cases in both countries, a more rigorous information system that can effectively provide warning of dengue risk and means of prevention for travelers headed to at-risk areas is urgently needed in both countries.

Shadow Detection Based on Regions of Light Sources for Object Extraction in Nighttime Video.

Intelligent video surveillance systems detect pre-configured surveillance events through background modeling, foreground and object extraction, object tracking, and event detection. Shadow regions inside video frames sometimes appear as foreground objects, interfere with ensuing processes, and finally degrade the event detection performance of the systems. Conventional studies have mostly used intensity, color, texture, and geometric information to perform shadow detection in daytime video, but these methods lack the capability of removing shadows in nighttime video. In this paper, a novel shadow detection algorithm for nighttime video is proposed; this algorithm partitions each foreground object based on the object's vertical histogram and screens out shadow objects by validating their orientations heading toward regions of light sources. From the experimental results, it can be seen that the proposed algorithm shows more than 93.8% shadow removal and 89.9% object extraction rates for nighttime video sequences, and the algorithm outperforms conventional shadow removal algorithms designed for daytime videos.

A Comparative Study of the Epidemiological Aspects of Legionnaires' Disease: Outbreaks in Korea and Japan, 2010 - 2014.

BACKGROUND: In the present study, we compared the epidemiological aspects of Legionnaire' disease (LD) outbreaks in Korea and Japan by analyzing the current state from 2010 to 2014. METHODS: The following factors were analyzed: nationwide cumulative incidence rate (CIR) per 100,000 populations and case-fatality rate in percentage, epidemiological aspects (i.e., case related to gender), male to female morbidity ratio (MFMR), age, seasonality and habitat distribution of LD cases. RESULTS: In total, there were 134 cases of LD with the CIR of 0.05 per 100,000 populations in Korea from 2010 to 2014. During the same period in Japan, there were 4,840 cases of LD with a CIR of 0.76 per 100,000 populations. The CIR in Japan was significantly higher than that in Korea. However, the case-fatality rates were at similar levels (3.0% vs. 5.9%). Moreover, LD affects both sexes differently, accounting for 2.05 and 4.41 of MFMR in Korea and Japan, respectively. In both countries, the incidence mainly occurred among people aged 40 years or older, and peaked in summer (37.3% vs. 33.7% of total cases). Significant differences were observed in the incidence of LD cases between the capital city and county areas in both two countries. These differences in LD risk factors reflect the different influences of reservoir/host with natural or artificial aquatic environments. CONCLUSION: This study provides a quantitative analysis of the epidemiological aspects and risk factors of LD outbreaks in Korea and Japan. We hope this study would be helpful for providing insight on effective future strategies to reduce LD outbreaks.

A Comparative Study of the Epidemiology of Human Leptospirosis in Korea and Japan between 2006 and 2012.

We undertook a comparative analysis of the epidemiology of reported human leptospirosis (HL) cases in Korea and Japan. Between 2006 and 2012, the cumulative incidence of HL in Korea was higher than that in Japan (1.26 vs. 0.14 per 100,000 population, respectively), and the total reported cases were 632 and 196, respectively. Significantly more men were infected than women in both Korea (63.0% men, P < 0.01) and Japan (87.8% men, P < 0.01). In both countries, the incidence was highest among those aged 40 years and older (60%), and peaked in autumn (78.5% cases in Korea, and 46.9% cases in Japan). However, Japan exhibited a significantly higher proportion of male cases, a younger age distribution, and less prominent seasonality. A significant difference was observed in the incidence of HL between the capital city and rural areas in Korea, but not in Japan. The differences in agricultural and forestry practices, and the efficacy or wastewater treatment infrastructure might influence the incidence level in rural areas in both countries. The differences between the 2 countries might be because of their unique geographical characteristics and variations in their levels of industrialization.

Risk Factors for Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Infection in Areas with a High Prevalence of HCV in the Republic of Korea in 2013.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: The prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in Busan, Gyeongnam, and Jeonnam Provinces in Korea is more than twice the national average. This study aimed to examine whether demographic and lifestyle characteristics are associated with HCV infection in these areas. METHODS: A case control study was performed at three study hospitals. HCV cases were matched with two controls for sex and age. Patient controls were selected from non-HCV patients at the same hospital. Healthy controls were subjects participating in medical checkups. Conditional logistic regression models were used. RESULTS: A total of 234 matched-case and patient- and healthy-control pairs were analyzed. The significant risk factors for both controls were sharing razors (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 2.39 and 3.29, respectively) and having more than four lifetime sexual partners (aOR, 2.15 and 6.89, respectively). Contact dockworkers (aOR, 1.91) and tattoos (aOR, 2.20) were significant risk factors for the patient controls. Transfusion (aOR, 5.38), a bloody operation (aOR, 5.02), acupuncture (aOR, 2.08), and piercing (aOR, 5.95) were significant risk factors for the healthy controls. Needle stick injuries and intravenous drug abuse were significant in the univariate analysis. CONCLUSIONS: More education concerning the dangers of sharing razors, tattoos and piercings is required to prevent HCV infection. More attention should be paid to needle stick injuries in hospitals and the community.

Comparison and analysis of the prevalence of hepatitis C virus infection by region in the Republic of Korea during 2005-2012.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: This study compared the prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in the Republic of Korea and estimated the high-risk regions and towns. METHODS: National Health Insurance Service data for 8 years from 2005 to 2012 were used. The subjects of the study had visited medical facilities and been diagnosed with or received treatment for acute or chronic HCV as a primary or secondary disease according to ICD-10 codes of B17.1 or B18.2, respectively. Any patient who received treatment for the same disease multiple times during 1 year was counted as one patient in that year. To correct for the effect of the age structure of the population by year and region, the age-adjusted prevalence was calculated using the direct method based on the registered population in 2010. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of HCV infection among Korean adults (>20 years old) increased from 0.14% in 2005 to 0.18% in 2012. The sex-, age-, and region-adjusted prevalence in 2012 was 0.18%. The prevalence was highest in Busan, Jeonnam, and Gyeongnam, and there were towns with noticeably higher prevalences within these regions: Jindo (0.97%) in Jeonnam, Namhae (0.90%) in Gyeongnam, and Seo-gu (0.86%) in Busan. CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of HCV infection differs by regions as well as towns in the Republic of Korea, and is highest in Busan, Jeonnam, and Gyeongnam. The reasons for the high prevalence in these specific regions should be identified, since this could help prevent HCV infections in the future. In addition, active surveillance and treatment policies should be introduced to stop any further spread of infection in these high-prevalence regions.

Step Detection Robust against the Dynamics of Smartphones.

A novel algorithm is proposed for robust step detection irrespective of step mode and device pose in smartphone usage environments. The dynamics of smartphones are decoupled into a peak-valley relationship with adaptive magnitude and temporal thresholds. For extracted peaks and valleys in the magnitude of acceleration, a step is defined as consisting of a peak and its adjacent valley. Adaptive magnitude thresholds consisting of step average and step deviation are applied to suppress pseudo peaks or valleys that mostly occur during the transition among step modes or device poses. Adaptive temporal thresholds are applied to time intervals between peaks or valleys to consider the time-varying pace of human walking or running for the correct selection of peaks or valleys. From the experimental results, it can be seen that the proposed step detection algorithm shows more than 98.6% average accuracy for any combination of step mode and device pose and outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms.

Unified camera tamper detection based on edge and object information.

In this paper, a novel camera tamper detection algorithm is proposed to detect three types of tamper attacks: covered, moved and defocused. The edge disappearance rate is defined in order to measure the amount of edge pixels that disappear in the current frame from the background frame while excluding edges in the foreground. Tamper attacks are detected if the difference between the edge disappearance rate and its temporal average is larger than an adaptive threshold reflecting the environmental conditions of the cameras. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated for short video sequences with three types of tamper attacks and for 24-h video sequences without tamper attacks; the algorithm is shown to achieve acceptable levels of detection and false alarm rates for all types of tamper attacks in real environments.

Trends in the epidemiological aspects and mortality of alcoholic liver disease in Korea in the decade between 2000 and 2009.

BACKGROUND: Alcohol consumption and related alcohol liver disease (ALD) have substantially increased in Korea during the last decade. The objective of this study was to evaluate the trends in the epidemiological aspects and mortality rate (MR) of Korea in the decade between 2000 and 2009. METHODS: The raw data analyzed in this study were obtained from the website of "the ALD" managed by Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), Korea Public Health Association (KPHA), and statistics website of Statistics Korea. The data analyses were performed using Excel 2007 statistical software (Microsoft Corp., USA). RESULTS: The amount of alcohol-consumption-per-capita-per-year (ACCY) in Korea was 8.38 L in 2000 and 8.54 L in 2009. The most taken alcoholic beverage was soju, followed by beer. There were a total of 1,403 case-fatalities (CF) with an MR of 2.98 per 100,000 populations of ALD in 2000, while a total of 3,588 CF with an MR of 7.21 in 2009 (P < 0.01). The CF and MR of ALD in males were significantly higher than those in females (P < 0.01). In over 40-year-old age groups, the CF and MR were significantly increased (P < 0.01). Moreover, occupational classification revealed that the mistress/students/jobless (MSJ) were the most risky group. The comparison of overall CF and MR of ALD by six key classifications (International Classification of Diseases (ICD)) showed that alcoholic cirrhosis (229 CF and 16.3%) in 2000 tended to be increased in 2009 (2,803 CF and 78.1%), while alcoholic fibrosis and sclerosis (607 CF and 43.3%) in 2000 significantly decreased in 2009 (120 CF and 3.3%), respectively. CONCLUSION: ALD is one of the most severe diseases in Korea, as indicated by its high CF and MR in this study. As over-consumption of alcoholic beverages is relatively common in Korea, more efforts should be made toward prevention of ALD by raising awareness of the risk factors of ALD by public health education.

Relationship of bispectral index to minimum alveolar concentration during isoflurane, sevoflurane or desflurane anaesthesia.

OBJECTIVE: To determine bispectral index (BIS) values produced by equipotent concentrations of commonly used volatile anaesthetics. METHODS: Female patients undergoing thyroidectomy were randomly assigned to receive isoflurane, sevoflurane or desflurane anaesthesia. After induction, anaesthesia was maintained by the volatile agent at 1 minimum alveolar concentration and supplemented with remifentanil infusion. BIS values were recorded during 1 h surgical anaesthesia after a 15 min equilibrium phase. RESULTS: Time-averaged BIS value during the study period was significantly lower in the desflurane group (n = 29) than the sevoflurane group (n = 27) (37.0 ± 4.9 vs 41.5 ± 5.9). Duration of deep hypnosis (BIS < 40) was significantly longer in the desflurane group than the sevoflurane group (40.2 ± 20.7 vs 24.3 ± 22.5 min). There were no significant differences in any parameter between the isoflurane group (n = 27) and any other group. CONCLUSIONS: Desflurane produces a greater hypnotic effect than sevoflurane during equipotent anaesthesia. Management of volatile anaesthesia using predetermined minimum alveolar concentration targets can lead to an unnecessarily long duration of deep hypnosis.

A retrospective study of the extensive eradication program for brucellosis outbreaks and control in Korea, 2002-2009.

This study concerns the quantitative analysis of brucellosis outbreaks and the related risk factors and control programs for both domestic cattle and human brucellosis infections in Korea between 2002 and 2009. There were a total of 77,082 infections of bovine brucellosis (BB) in domestic cattle with a prevalence rate (PR) of 13.3 per 1,000 cattle; during the same period there were 620 cases of human brucellosis (HB) with a PR of 0.16 per 100,000 persons. Moreover, the correlation coefficient of brucellosis outbreaks between cattle and humans was highly significant (r = +0.985). The attack ratio of HB cases was 8.04 per 1,000 BB cases. The distribution of brucellosis outbreaks was concentrated in the southeast region of Korea (P < 0.01). Significantly more males were infected than females (86.9% versus 13.1%), and a high incidence of HB was observed in those aged more than 40 years (86.1%). The majority of HB cases occurred primarily among rural inhabitants (92.3%) and among famers and related workers (47.9%). Finally, all of the measures that were applied in the extensive eradication program for brucellosis outbreaks and control were based principally on an intensive test-and-slaughter policy and contributed significantly to the reduction in the outbreaks of brucellosis in Korea.

Rab15 alternative splicing is altered in spheres of neuroblastoma cells.

Neuroblastoma is an aggressive pediatric tumor that accounts for 15% of cancer-related deaths in children. More than half of high-risk neuroblastoma patients develop tumor relapse that is lethal in most cases. A small population of tumor-initiating cells (TICs), recently identified from high-risk neuroblastoma patients as spheres, is believed to be responsible for tumor relapse. Rab family small G proteins are essential in controlling membrane traffic and their misregulation results in several cancers. Rab15 was originally isolated as a brain-specific Rab protein regulating the endocytic recycling pathway and was recently identified as a downstream target of the neural transcription factor Atoh1. Previously, we identified two alternatively spliced Rab15 isoforms in neuroblastoma cells and showed a significant correlation between Rab15 expression and neuronal differentiation. As aberrant alternative splicing is intimately associated with an increasing number of cancers, its use as a new diagnostic and/or prognostic biomarker has attracted considerable attention. In the present study, we explored cancer-associated changes of Rab15 alternative splicing in neuroblastoma TICs. We found that Rab15 alternative splicing generated two novel isoforms designated as Rab15(AN2) and Rab15(AN3) in addition to two known isoforms designated as Rab15(CN) and Rab15(AN1). Although both Rab15(AN2) and Rab15(AN3) contained premature termination codons, they were detected in not only neuroblastoma cells but also in normal human tissues. One isoform was predominantly expressed in the brain and testis, while the other isoform was more specifically expressed in the brain. In neuroblastoma, Rab15 isoform balance measured by the Rab15(CN)/Rab15(AN1+AN2+AN3) ratio was significantly decreased in spheres compared to parental cells. These results suggest that Rab15 alternative splicing may serve as a biomarker to discriminate TICs from non-TICs in neuroblastoma.

Valproic acid increases SMN2 expression and modulates SF2/ASF and hnRNPA1 expression in SMA fibroblast cell lines.

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a common autosomal recessive neuromuscular disorder that is caused by loss of the survival motor neuron gene, SMN1. SMA treatment strategies have focused on production of the SMN protein from the almost identical gene, SMN2. Valproic acid (VPA) is a histone deacetylase inhibitor that can increase SMN levels in some SMA cells or SMA patients through activation of SMN2 transcription or splicing correction of SMN2 exon 7. It remains to be clarified what concentration of VPA is required and by what mechanisms the SMN production from SMN2 is elicited. We observed that in two fibroblast cell lines from Japanese SMA patients, more than 1mM of VPA increased SMN2 expression at both the transcript and protein levels. VPA increased not only full-length (FL) transcript level but also exon 7-excluding (Δ7) transcript level in the cell lines and did not change the ratio of FL/Δ7, suggesting that SMN2 transcription was mainly activated. We also found that VPA modulated splicing factor expression: VPA increased the expression of splicing factor 2/alternative splicing factor (SF2/ASF) and decreased the expression of heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein A1 (hnRNPA1). In conclusion, more than 1mM of VPA activated SMN2 transcription and modulated the expression of splicing factors in our SMA fibroblast cell lines.