This study was carried out to evaluate the effect of micro-current therapy on muscle atrophy and delayed wound healing process caused by traumatic peripheral nerve injury. For this, twenty-five 5-week-old Sprague Dawley rat were used and assigned to five groups including the normal group (NOR, n=5), the wound group (WD, n=5), the wounded and treated with micro-current electrical therapy group (WD+MET, n=5), the sciatic nerve denervated and wounded group (WD+DN, n=5), and the sciatic nerve denervated, wounded and treated with micro-current electrical therapy group (WD+DN+MET, n=5). In order to assess the changes in length of incisional wound for 12 days and the muscle volume for 2 weeks, the ImageJ analysis of macroscopic analysis and micro-CT data were obtained and analyzed. As a result, significant delay in the process in wound healing were observed and micro-current therapy suppress the postponement of healing process. Furthermore, there were significant changes in muscle volume between electrically treated group and non-treated group. These result shows that electrical stimulation may improve the delayed healing process and muscle atrophy at once.

In this paper, we present a wearable measurement system for monitoring rounded shoulders. The system contains a shoulder correction band and a stretch sensor that can correct and measure shoulder posture, respectively. The capacitance of the stretch sensor changes linearly according to changes in the shoulders. To verify measurement, a motion analysis system was used as the reference to compare the change in the rounded angles of the shoulders and the change in the stretch sensor's capacitance. The results indicated that there is a high correlation between the two changes and the system can be used as a monitoring device for rounded shoulders.

In this study, we investigated the activity of Mirror Neuron System(MNS) and Steady State Visual Evoked Potential(SSVEP) according to frequency and duty rate of the flickering action video. Eight subjects were recruited for this study. The stimulus was consisted of a three-minute black and a flickering action video and they were repeatedly presented every six seconds. We used 50%, 75% of duty rate for each frequency 7.5 Hz and 15 Hz, and we also used the non-flickering condition and rest condition. As a result, the Mu suppression was the largest at 7. 5Hz and 50% duty rate and the SSVEP power was higher at 15 Hz than 7.5 Hz.

Intervertebral disc(IVD) mainly consists of Annulus fibrosus(AF) and Nucleus pulposus(NP), playing a role of distributing a mechanical load on vertebral body. IVD tissue engineering has been developed the methods to achieve anatomic morphology and restoration of biological function. The goal of present study is to identify the possibilities for creating a substitute of IVD the morphology and biological functions are the same as undamaged complete IVD. To fabricate the AF and NP combine biphasic IVD tissue, AF tissue scaffolds have been printed by 3D bio-printing system with natural biomaterials and NP tissues have been prepared by scaffold-free culture system. We evaluated whether the combined structure of 3D printed AF scaffold and scaffold-free NP tissue construct could support the architecture and cell functions as IVD tissue. 3D printed AF scaffolds were printed with 60 degree angle stripe patterned lamella structure(the inner-diameter is 5mm, outer-diameter is 10 mm and height is 3 mm). In the cytotoxicity test, the 3D printed AF scaffold showed good cell compatibility. The results of histological and immunohistochemical staining also showed the newly synthesized collagens and glycosaminoglycans, which are specific makers of AF tissue. And scaffold-free NP tissue actively synthesized glycosaminoglycans and type 2 collagen, which are the major components of NP tissue. When we combined two engineered tissues to realize the IVD, combined biphasic tissues showed a good integration between the two tissues. In conclusion, this study describes the fabrication of Engineered biphasic IVD tissue by using enable techniques of tissue engineering. This fabricated biphasic tissue would be used as a model system for the study of the native IVD tissue. In the future, it may have the potential to replace the damaged IVD in the future.

Conventional drug delivery methods mainly include subcutaneous injection and oral administration. Subcutaneous injection has the advantages of delivering the correct concentration, but it might cause pain and trauma to patients. Although oral administrations do not accompany pain as the subcutaneous injection, unexpected side effects may occur because they undergo digestion process and it is not easy for many drugs to be exposed to targeted sites with proper concentration. While dissolving microneedles have been extensively studied to overcome the limitations of conventional subcutaneous injection, the effects on microneedle shapes for drug release have not been fully explored. In this study, the characteristics of hyaluronic acid microneedles for cone and quadrangular pyramidal shapes were examined by the size, volume, contact surface area, skin permeability, and dissolution rate. As a result, the cone shapes of hyaluronic acid microneedles had high skin permeability, and the quadrangular pyramid of shapes hyaluronic acid microneedles showed a fast dissolution rate, given by the large contact area on the skin. Based on the results, we could confirm that the shape of a dissolving microneedles can affect skin permeability and the drug delivery rate.

The risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) is known higher in cancer patients and lower incidence in the east country. This study was conducted in order to check the incidence rate of VTE in the Korean high risk patients who are treated in the intensive care unit (ICU), and to verify the correlation of the incidence of VTE and prophylaxis methods. This study was conducted as a retrospective study for 492 cancer patients from April 2011 to December 2014. According to the medical records of subjects, their prophylaxis methods and the incidence of VTE were surveyed and then correlation of them was investigated with statistical methods. 385 patients met the inclusion criteria. VTE occrred in 17 of them (4.4%). The prophylaxis methods are consisted of medical method (136 subjects), mechnical method(33 subjects), and medical & mechnkcal method (124 subjects). VTE occurred in 14 patients (4.8%) from 293 patients (76%) who were given at least one prophylaxis method. From all of 93 patients without prophylaxis, three patients experienced VTE (3.3%). The target patients were high risk in VTE, but the incidence rate of VTE was lower than reported in previous studies. The reason of this is considered that more active prophylaxis intervention was applied to the subjects because of their high risk status. As a result, it is considered that in the high risk patients, it would be effective to apply active and complex prophylaxis intervention for the prevention of VTE.

Traditional electroencephalography (EEG)-based authentication systems generally use external stimuli that require user attention and relatively long time for authentication. The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of biometric authentication based on EEG without using any external stimuli. Seventeen subjects took part in the experiment and their EEGs were measured while repetitively closing and opening their eyes. For identifying each subject, we calculated inter- and intra-subject cross-correlation using changes in alpha activity (8-13 Hz) during eyes closed as compared to eyes open. In order to optimize the number of recording electrodes, we calculated authentication accuracy by progressively reducing the number of electrodes used in the analysis. Significant increase in alpha activity was observed for all subjects during eyes closed, focusing on occipital areas, and spatial patterns of changed alpha activity were considerably different between the subjects. A mean authentication accuracy of 92.45% was obtained, which was retained over 75% when using only 8 electrodes placed around occipital areas. Our results could demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed novel authentication method based on resting state EEGs.

In this study, We developed a Ancillary device for child radiography for X-ray of children under 5 years old and verified its effectiveness. Chest X-rays of children younger than 5 years of age were performed by Supine method at the position of Table detector, Short - Source to Image Receptor Distance(SID). Existing Supine and Short -SID imaging methods cause many problems, such as errors in image reading and excessive radiation exposure dose to patients, but the use of an Ancillary device for child radiography(ADCR) solves these problems. A total of 160 children were divided into the Upright group using ADCR and Supine group without ADCR. The chest X-ray image was visually evaluated by two radiologists with reference to the European Commission's List of Quality Criteria for Diagnostic Radiographic Images in Pediatrics. The total score of the qualitative evaluation was 5.15% higher in the chest upright method using ADCR than in the chest supine method without ADCR, and the chest upright method score was higher than that of the chest supine method in items 1 to 7. whether infants have deep inspiration or not, 4.87% higher for item 1, whether infants rotate or not and the degree of tilting, 0% higher for the item 2, the reproduction of image from just above apices of lungs to T12/L1, 0% for the item 3, reproduction of the vascular pattern in central 2/3 of the lungs, 6.92% higher for the item 4, reproduction of the trachea and the proximal bronchi, 12.9% higher for the item 5, visually sharp reproduction of the diaphragm and costo-phrenic angles, 10% higher for the item 6, reproduction of the spine and paraspinal structures and visualisation of the retrocardiac lung and the mediastinum, and 3.65% higher for the item 7. Items 2 and 3 showed no statistically significant differences(P > 0.05), and items 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7 showed statistically significant differences(P < 0.05). In conclusion, Upright method using ADCR in pediatric chest X-ray is considered as a good alternative to existing Supine method.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a pillow simulated with cranial sacral therapy (CST) on sleep induction using electroencephalography (EEG). This study included 12 voluntary participants divided into experimental group (CST group) and control group (Non-CST group) to observe EEG changes. The position of the electrode for EEG measurement consists of 8 channels electrodes (Fp1, Fp2, F3, F4, T3, T4, P3 and P4). In this study, we measured the fall asleep time, change of brain activity and sleep wave ratio using EEG wave (${\delta}$, ${\theta}$, ${\alpha}$, ${\beta}$ and ${\gamma}$). As a result, the mean fall asleep time of the experimental group was shorter than that of the control group significantly (p < 0.001). Also in comparison with the control group, both the delta (d) and theta (q) wave corresponding to the slow waves showed a larger increase and the alpha (a) wave showed a larger decrease significantly. The slow waves of experimental group showed a higher rate of significant increase than the control group (p < 0.001). Therefore this study showed that pillow based on CST had an effective in improving sleep induction and quality.