Jeon Mi Lee

Snoring detection using a piezo snoring sensor based on hidden Markov models.

This study presents a snoring detection method based on hidden Markov models (HMMs) using a piezo snoring sensor. Snoring is a major symptom of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). In most sleep studies, snoring is detected with a microphone. Since these studies analyze the acoustic properties of snoring, they need to acquire data at high sampling rates, so a large amount of data should be processed. Recently, several sleep studies have monitored snoring using a piezo snoring sensor. However, an automatic method for snoring detection using a piezo snoring sensor has not been reported in the literature. This study proposed the HMM-based method to detect snoring using this sensor, which is attached to the neck. The data from 21 patients with OSA were gathered for training and test sets. The short-time Fourier transform and short-time energy were computed so they could be applied to HMMs. The data were classified as snoring, noise and silence according to their HMMs. As a result, the sensitivity and the positive predictivity values were 93.3% and 99.1% for snoring detection, respectively. The results demonstrated that the method produced simple, portable and user-friendly detection tools that provide an alternative to the microphone-based method.

A study on characteristics of radial arteries through ultrasonic waves

The study aims to measure and analyze the thickness and depth of blood vessel on the pulse diagnosis locations (CHON, KWAN, CHUCK) and the blood velocity through the use of ultrasonic waves (LOGIQ5PRO, GE Medical, U.S.) in order to understand the structural difference of pulse diagnosis locations. The subjects included 44 healthy men and women (22.28±2.62 age) considered normal in terms of Body Mass Index (BMI). The thickness and depth of the blood vessel and the blood velocity were measured three times on CHON, KWAN and CHUCK to obtain the average value.

Genetic aspects and clinical characteristics of familial meniere's disease in a South Korean population

This study was undertaken to investigate the prevalence, inheritance patterns, and clinical characteristics of familial Menieres disease (MD) in a South Korean population.

Variations in non-invasive radial artery pulse waveform at different measuring positions

Noninvasive radial artery pulse wave has been widely not only for the pulse wave analysis (PWA) itself but also for assessment of arterial stiffness with estimated aortic pulse wave from peripheral pulse wave.

Robotic excision of a huge parathyroid adenoma via a retroauricular approach.

AbstractPrimary hyperparathyroidism results from the overproduction of parathyroid hormone by 1 or more autonomously hyperfunctioning parathyroid glands and often causes hypercalcemia. Once this condition has been diagnosed, the treatment of choice is surgical removal. There have been many attempts to remove the hyperfunctioning gland with minimally invasive surgical techniques, with cure rates comparable with those of conventional techniques. On the basis of our initial surgical experiences of robotic thyroidectomy and other head and neck surgeries via a retroauricular (RA) approach, we have recently successfully performed robotic excision of a huge parathyroid tumor via an RA approach on a 44-year-old woman who had been diagnosed with a parathyroid adenoma. It is the first to describe in detail the successful completion of a robotic parathyroidectomy via an RA approach.

Automatic snoring detection from nasal pressure data

This study presents a method for automatic snoring detection from a nasal pressure data. First, a spectrogram analysis was performed in order to obtain information about the spectral characteristic of nasal pressure data. The automatic method is based on a simple signal filtering and short-time energy technique. Fifteen patients were participated in order to evaluation the performance of the proposed method. Results are compared with manually labeled snoring events by watching video records. The sensitivity and positive predictivity value were 93.73% and 93.70%, respectively. The results in this study could provide sleep experts with the method to objectively monitor sleep-disordered breathing in CPAP system or PSG study.

Audiologic limitations of Vibrant Soundbridge device: Is the contralateral hearing aid fitting indispensable?

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the audiologic limitations of the Vibrant Soundbridge (VSB) implant and the benefits of contralateral hearing aid (HA) fitting in VSB recipients.

Sleep Apnea Detection using Estimated Stroke Volume

Abstract: This paper proposes a new algorithm for sleep apnea detection based on stroke volume. It is very impor-tant to detect sleep apnea since it is a common and serious sleep-disordered breathing (SDB). In the previous studies,methods for sleep apnea detection using heart rate variability, airflow and blood oxygen saturation, tracheal soundhave been proposed, but a method using stroke volume has not been studied. The proposed algorithm consists ofdetection of characteristic points in continuous blood pressure signal, estimation of stroke volume and detection ofsleep apnea. To evaluate the performance of algorithm, the MIT-BIH Polysomnographic Database provided by Phsio-Net was used. As a result, the sensitivity of 85.99%, the specificity of 72.69%, and the accuracy of 84.34%, on theaverage were obtained. The proposed method showed comparable or higher performance compared with previousmethods.Key words: Sleep apnea, Stroke volume, Hypopnea, Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), Central sleep apnea (CSA)

Evaluation of Maximal Speech Intelligibility With Vibrant Soundbridge in Patients With Sensorineural Hearing Loss.

OBJECTIVE The study investigated improvements in maximal speech intelligibility after Vibrant Soundbridge (VSB) implantation and analyzed the effect of the hearing loss pattern on maximal speech intelligibility represented by a phonetically balanced word score (PBmax). The effect of middle ear implants on PBmax has not been evaluated yet. STUDY DESIGN Study. SETTING Tertiary academic medical center. PATIENTS/INTERVENTIONS Sixty patients who underwent VSB from December 2011 to January 2016 were retrospectively reviewed. All the patients had hearing aids preoperatively. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Pure-tone and speech audiometry were checked with and without hearing aids and then with the VSB. The patients were divided into two groups: flat and down-sloping type of hearing loss. PBmax score was evaluated at the most comfortable listening level before and after VSB implantation and compared with scores with/without HA. RESULTS PBmax for both conventional HA and VSB were significantly higher compared with the unaided condition. The improvement in speech recognition was significantly better using VSB than using HA (p = 0.003). However, there was no significant difference in the improvement provided by VSB and HA in patients with a flat hearing loss. Patients with a down-sloping audiogram showed significantly better improvement with VSB than with HA (p = 0.003). Moreover, patients with greater preoperative high-frequency hearing loss had greater improvement in PBmax after VSB implantation. CONCLUSION Speech intelligibility can be significantly improved by VSB implantation, especially in patients with a down-sloping hearing loss. This finding can help select patients who will benefit most from VSB implantation.

Benefits of active middle ear implants in mixed hearing loss: Stapes versus round window

We compared the audiologic benefits of active middle ear implants with those of passive middle ear implants with hearing aids in mixed hearing loss, and also compared the outcomes of stapes vibroplasty with those of round window vibroplasty.