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Transparent organic light emitting diode (OLED) display is one of the most promising devices among next-generation information displays because of beneficial characteristics, such as self-emissive and optically clear properties. Nevertheless, in conventional transparent OLED display devices, there are serious intrinsic problems in terms of the transmittance in the dark state because of empty windows in the cell, so the contrast ratio of the transparent OLED display would be deteriorated even though it can exhibit excellent bright state. In general, the transparent mode using the OLED device applies an empty area in each pixel because an emitting device could never reveal the background image, so the transparent OLED should contain the empty area in the pixel for transparent images. This may cause the optical degradation in the dark state. To solve this problem, we propose hybrid-type transparent OLED display modes that apply a liquid crystal (LC) to the transparent window part of the empty space. In this paper, we applied two dichroic LC modes— which use an electrically controlled birefringence (ECB) mode (Heilmeier type) for the polarized mode and a cholesteric LC mode (Guest-Host mode) for the non-polarized mode—to the empty area. In each hybrid mode, we have observed optical performance, including the transmittance in the dark/bright state, contrast ratio and response time as a function of cell parameters. As a result, we confirmed that the dark state and the contrast ratio could be improved by applying the proposed modes without serious decay of the transmittance in the bright state.

Background Infectious conditions may increase the risk of venous thromboembolism. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the risk factor for combined infectious disease and its influence on mortality in patients with pulmonary embolism (PE). Methods Patients with PE diagnosed based on spiral computed tomography findings of the chest were retrospectively analyzed. They were classified into two groups: patients who developed PE in the setting of infectious disease or those with PE without infection based on review of their medical charts. Results Of 258 patients with PE, 67 (25.9%) were considered as having PE combined with infectious disease. The sites of infections were the respiratory tract in 52 patients (77.6%), genitourinary tract in three patients (4.5%), and hepatobiliary tract in three patients (4.5%). Underlying lung disease (odds ratio [OR], 3.69; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.926–7.081; p

In general, optical properties of a top-emitting organic light-emitting diode (OLED) are dependent on the cavity effect of the OLED structure. Therefore, the optical path length of the many thin solid films in the OLED, which is strongly affected by the refractive index and thickness of each material, controls the cavity effect of the cell. In previous research, a parameter space method for optimizing the inorganic layer thickness of a red OLED structure was introduced to achieve the required bandwidth and peak wavelength. This is a simple method with high accuracy and can also be applied to red, green, and blue OLED structures. To design an OLED cell with a practical approach, however, the RGB OLED device requires the thickness of each inorganic layer and organic layer in all three R, G, and B OLED structures to be same. In this study, we applied the parameter space method to an RGB OLED device to find out and optimize the thickness of three inorganic parameters: Indium Tin Oxide (ITO), cathode, and capping layer (CPL) using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The parameters ITO, cathode, and CPL were scanned from 18 to 21 nm, 5 to 100 nm, and 10 to 200 nm, respectively. The peak wavelength and bandwidth lines of the three spectral colors were placed on a map of the three inorganic layer thickness parameters to find the optimized points that can provide the desired optical characteristics with the same film thickness in the cell.

In this study, we observed the color performance of an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) as functions of the optical lengths of the inorganic layers on the parameter space map in order to obtain the goal of increased color performance. To design the dominant wavelength and the bandwidth of the OLED, we employed the finite-difference time-domain method to calculate the optical characteristics of the light emitted from the emitting material layer. We only handled inorganic layers such as the cathode layer, the capping layer, and the indium-tin oxide layer in OLED layers to avoid changing the electro-optical characteristics of the light emerging from the organic layers. With this simple technique, we established the optimal conditions for the optical length of each layer without any intrusion into the organic layers. In this study, we demonstrated the parameter space map for a red OLED that exhibits a 24-nm bandwidth with a peak emission at wavelength λ = 618 nm. We verified the proposed parameter space method by experimentation and present the experimental results in this paper.

Image acquisition is a complex process that is affected by a wide variety of internal and environmental factors. Hence, visibility restoration is crucial for many high-level applications in photography and computer vision. This paper provides a systematic review and meta-analysis of visibility restoration algorithms with a focus on those that are pertinent to poor weather conditions. This paper starts with an introduction to optical image formation and then provides a comprehensive description of existing algorithms as well as a comparative evaluation. Subsequently, there is a thorough discussion on current difficulties that are worthy of a scientific effort. Moreover, this paper proposes a general framework for visibility restoration in hazy weather conditions while using haze-relevant features and maximum likelihood estimates. Finally, a discussion on the findings and future developments concludes this paper.

Background The aim of this study was to examine the influence of body mass index (BMI) on the development of acute kidney injury (AKI) in critically ill patients in intensive care unit (ICU). Methods Data of patients admitted to medical ICU from December 2011 to May 2014 were retrospectively analyzed. Patients were classified into three groups according to their BMI: underweight (

Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may cause changes in the shape of the thoracic cage by increasing lung volume and hyperinflation. This study investigated changes in thoracic cage dimensions and related factors in patients with COPD. Methods We enrolled 85 patients with COPD (76 males, 9 females; mean age, 70.6±7.1 years) and 30 normal controls. Thoracic cage dimensions were measured using chest computed tomography at levels 3, 6, and 9 of the thoracic spine. We measured the maximal transverse diameter, mid-sagittal anteroposterior (AP) diameter, and maximal AP diameter of the right and left hemithorax. Results The average AP diameter was significantly greater in patients with COPD compared with normal controls (13.1±2.8 cm vs. 12.2±1.13 cm, respectively; p=0.001). The ratio of AP/transverse diameter of the thoracic cage was also significantly greater in patients with COPD compared with normal controls (0.66±0.061 vs. 0.61±0.86; p=0.002). In COPD patients, the AP diameter of the thoracic cage was positively correlated with body mass index (BMI) and 6-minute walk test distance (r=0.395, p

Existing image dehazing algorithms typically rely on a two-stage procedure. The medium transmittance and lightness are estimated in the first stage, and the scene radiance is recovered in the second by applying the simplified Koschmieder model. However, this type of unconstrained dehazing is only applicable to hazy images, and leads to untoward artifacts in haze-free images. Moreover, no algorithm that can automatically detect the haze density and perform dehazing on an arbitrary image has been reported in the literature to date. Therefore, this paper presents an automated dehazing system capable of producing satisfactory results regardless of the presence of haze. In the proposed system, the input image simultaneously undergoes multiscale fusion-based dehazing and haze-density-estimating processes. A subsequent image blending step then judiciously combines the dehazed result with the original input based on the estimated haze density. Finally, tone remapping post-processes the blended result to satisfactorily restore the scene radiance quality. The self-calibration capability on haze conditions lies in using haze density estimate to jointly guide image blending and tone remapping processes. We performed extensive experiments to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed system over state-of-the-art benchmark methods.

BACKGROUND: A clinical classification system has been developed to define the severity and predict the prognosis of subjects with non-cystic fibrosis (CF) bronchiectasis. We aimed to identify laboratory parameters that are correlated with the bronchiectasis severity index (BSI) and FACED score. METHODS: The medical records of 107 subjects with non-CF bronchiectasis for whom BSI and FACED scores could be calculated were retrospectively reviewed. The correlations between the laboratory parameters and BSI or FACED score were assessed, and multiple-linear regression analysis was performed to identify variables independently associated with BSI and FACED score. An additional subgroup analysis was performed according to sex. RESULTS: Among all of the enrolled subjects, 49 (45.8%) were male and 58 (54.2%) were female. The mean BSI and FACED scores were 9.43 ± 3.81 and 1.92 ± 1.59, respectively. The serum albumin level (r = −0.49), bilirubin level (r = −0.31), C-reactive protein level (r = 0.22), hemoglobin level (r = −0.2), and platelet/lymphocyte ratio (r = 0.31) were significantly correlated with BSI. Meanwhile, serum albumin (r = −0.37) and bilirubin level (r = −0.25) showed a significant correlation with the FACED score. Multiple-linear regression analysis showed that the serum bilirubin level was independently associated with BSI, and the serum albumin level was independently associated with both scoring systems. Subgroup analysis revealed that the level of uric acid was also a significant variable independently associated with the BSI in male bronchiectasis subjects. CONCLUSIONS: Several laboratory variables were identified as possible prognostic factors for non-CF bronchiectasis. Among them, the serum albumin level exhibited the strongest correlation and was identified as an independent variable associated with the BSI and FACED scores.

Vertical alignment liquid crystal (LC) cell driven by in-plane field with 3-D polymer network exhibited no pooling mura under an external mechanical pressure; however, the operating voltage of the device was increased, because the polymer network hinders field-induced reorientation of LC. In this paper, we adopted a modified cell structure in which a counter electrode on top substrate of the conventional mode is existed, to improve upon this drawback. The proposed device in which the polymer network is formed in bulk of vertically aligned LC layer shows a very fast response time of 2 ms (rise + decay), 57% reduction in operating voltage, and also keeps image quality although the cell is curved.

This paper proposes a single image haze removal algorithm that shows a marked improvement on the color attenuation prior-based method. Through a vast number of experiments on a wide variety of images, it is discovered that there are problems in the color attenuation prior, such as color distortion and background noise, which arise due to the fact that the priors do not hold true in all circumstances. Successful resolution of these problems using the proposed algorithm shows its superior performance to other state-of-the-art methods in terms of both subjective visual quality and quantitative metrics, on both synthetic and natural hazy image datasets. The proposed algorithm also is computationally friendly, due to the use of an efficient quad-decomposition algorithm for atmospheric light estimation and a simple modified hybrid median filter for depth map refinement.

This paper presents a fast and compact hardware implementation using an efficient haze removal algorithm. The algorithm employs a modified hybrid median filter to estimate the hazy particle map, which is subsequently subtracted from the hazy image to recover the haze-free image. Adaptive tone remapping is also used to improve the narrow dynamic range due to haze removal. The computation error of the proposed hardware architecture is minimized compared with the floating-point algorithm. To ensure real-time hardware operation, the proposed architecture utilizes the modified hybrid median filter using the well-known Batcher&rsquo, s parallel sort. Hardware verification confirmed that high-resolution video standards were processed in real time for haze removal.

Background: Infectious conditions may increase the risk of venous thromboembolism. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the risk factor for combined infectious disease and its influence on mortality in patients with pulmonary embolism (PE). Methods: Patients with PE diagnosed based on spiral computed tomography findings of the chest were retrospectively analyzed. They were classified into two groups: patients who developed PE in the setting of infectious disease or those with PE without infection based on review of their medical charts. Results: Of 258 patients with PE, 67 (25.9%) were considered as having PE combined with infectious disease. The sites of infections were the respiratory tract in 52 patients (77.6%), genitourinary tract in three patients (4.5%), and hepatobiliary tract in three patients (4.5%). Underlying lung disease (odds ratio [OR], 3.69; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.926-7.081; p

A polymer-stabilized vertical alignment (PS-VA) mode with fishbone-shaped pixel electrode structure is mainly used in large-sized liquid crystal displays (LCDs) owing to its advantages such as wide viewing angle, good transmittance and fast response time. One drawback of this mode is a main bone electrode, which crosses in the center of a pixel. It causes the transmittance to decrease badly because LCs cannot be reoriented in this region, and thus, it is particularly unfavorable in an ultra-high-definition LCD. Here, we propose an innovative structure with the main bone electrode relocated to the edge area in a pixel, and investigate how this reverse directed fishbone-shaped pixel electrode structure affects electro-optic characteristics. The proposed structure shows enhanced electro-optic performance, such as the higher transmittance and the faster response time than the conventional VA mode with fishbone-shaped pixel electrode structure.

In general, surface anchoring energy is one of the most important parameters that strongly affect electrooptical performance, especially the optical response time of liquid crystal (LC) displays. In this paper, we proposed a photoalignment method for strong surface anchoring energy by applying double ultraviolet (UV) exposure with a separated bandwidth to a photosensitive polyimide layer with embedded reactive mesogens (RMs) that can increase the anchoring energy during polymerization. We first polymerized the embedded RM molecules using long wavelength UV rays (over 340 nm), and then achieved the ordered photosensitive alignment layer using short UV rays (between 254 and 340 nm). We compared the measured surface anchoring energy and the optical response time by the proposed method with the conventional UV exposure using the in-plane switching LC mode for verification. As a result, we confirmed that the anchoring energy increased two times and the optical response time improved by 22% compared with the conventional pure UV exposure method.

The application of a single-wall carbon-nanotube (SWCNT) and polyimide (PI) composite thin film on an indium tin-oxide (ITO) glass substrate, working as the command surface in a twisted nematic liquid crystal display (LCD), is described. SWCNTs were chopped and oxidized in a strong acid medium to make them more miscible in a polyimide solution. A film of this newly-developed PISWCNT composite was rubbed to determine the director direction for the LC molecules. The newlyfabricated command surface was examined using a laser beam profiler and atomic force microscopy. Sizes of shortened SWCNTs were characterized by using field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). Finally, small-sized test panels were fabricated from this composite-coated ITO glass, and their electro-optic performances were measured. Although the operating voltage to switch a cell was increased by around 41%, the switching speed was improved remarkably. The rise time of the test cells was found to be improved by around 10.12% and the decay time by around 29.77%. Thus, an overall improvement of around 16.12% in the total switching time was achieved. The change in the surface morphology of the newly-developed composite materials was found to be one of the factors responsible for the faster switching of the device. Detailed discussions are given in this report to explain the faster switching of the newly-developed twisted nematic liquid crystal display (TN-LCD). The device can be useful for practical applications.

The γ-curve represents the viewing angle characteristics of a liquid crystal (LC) cell in all gray levels, including the dark state. In this paper, we propose a optical configuration of a four-domain (4-D) twisted nematic (TN) LC cell for improving the γ-curve distortion in the oblique direction, without any deterioration in the optical property of a conventional 4-D TN cell. A positive A-plate and a negative A-plate are applied at the top and the bottom of the 4-D TN LC layer, respectively. The two A-films applied can be optimized at all viewing angles by calculating the polarization difference (Δ p ) as functions of the retardation and the optical axis of the films, so that the transmittance distortion in the middle gray scale can be compensated for in all viewing directions. As a result of a calculation of the gamma distortion index (GDI), the γ-curve can be improved by more than 70% in the off-axis at 0° and 180°, and by more than 50% in the off-axis at 90° and 270°.

We propose a planar polymeric liquid crystal (LC) lens with a low cell gap (~ 4.6 μm) for a 2-D/3-D switchable auto-stereoscopic display. The proposed lens consists of two LC layers, one is a photopolymerized LC lens layer with a non-uniform refractive index with parabolic curve distribution, and the other is a half-wave LC switching layer of the vertical alignment type, which performs the 2-D/3-D image switching. The optimized refractive index of the LC lens layer was simply realized by polymerizing the LC molecules using a reactive mesogen. The proposed LC lens allow fast 2-D/3-D switching with low voltage and a simple fabrication process because of a low cell gap of the switching layer. We verified the electro-optical characteristics of the proposed LC lens by fabricating each layer after optimizing the cell structure. The measured focal length as a function of the applied voltage in the 3-D mode was compared with the calculated focal length and we confirmed that the measured results agreed with the calculated results.

In order to improve the image crosstalk for a film patterned retarder (FPR) of a linear polarizer type in a stereoscopic three dimensional (3D) display, we propose an optical structure with wideband and wide viewing angle characteristics and using only two half-wave retarders. This proposed half-wave retarder of the FPR 3D cell consists of a λ/2 biaxial film and a patterned λ/2 A-film. We calculated the phase retardation and confirmed the polarization states of the light passing through each film on the Poincare over all visible wavelengths by using the Stokes vector and the Muller matrix method. Then, we optimized the optical parameters of the two retardation films in the oblique direction by using the parameter space method as a function of the optical axis and the NZ parameter of the biaxial λ/2 film. Consequently, we verified that the left 3D crosstalk of the proposed FPR 3D cell could be improved by about 91.87% in the horizontal viewing direction and 97.22% in the vertical viewing direction. The right 3D crosstalk could almost maintain the crosstalk value of the conventional structure.

In this paper, we proposed the novel hybrid guest-host liquid crystal display using the negative charged black particles in order to improve the low contrast ratio. We designed patterned electrode in order to switch the charged particle to the opposite electrode and improved the electro-optical characteristics by optimize the mixture of guest materials. In Comparison with the Heilmeier Guest-Host mode, proposed hybrid guest-host structure showed 80% reduction of transmittance in dark state, and the performance was examined by comparing contrast ratio.

Introduction: We evaluated the diagnostic yield of cytologic analysis of bronchial washing in addition to forceps biopsy on the basis of bronchoscopic appearance and histologic type in lung cancer. Methods: This retrospective study included 611 patients who had lung cancer and underwent bronchoscopic procedures between April 2003 and December 2008. Bronchoscopic appearance was classified into six types (tumor, infiltrative, necrotic, normal, compressive and aspecific) on the basis of endoscopic morphology. Results: The forceps biopsy were positive in 492 cases (80.5%), and the diagnostic yield of the combination of forceps biopsy with cytologic analysis of bronchial washing was 84.1% (514/611 cases), that is, a statistically significant increase of 3.6% (P 0.05). However, in the case of normal and compressive lesions, the addition of forceps biopsy to washing cytologic analysis significantly increased the diagnostic yield (P 0.05). Conclusions: The combination of forceps biopsy and washing cytologic analysis offers a better diagnostic yield than biopsy alone in diagnosing lung cancer. Both procedures should be performed during bronchoscopy even if no endobronchial lesion is present. Please cite this paper as: Lee GD, Kim HC, Kim YE, Lee SJ, Cho YJ, Jeong YY, Jeon K-N, Jang IS, Lee JD and Hwang YS. Value of cytologic analysis of bronchial washings in lung cancer on the basis of bronchoscopic appearance. Clin Respir J 2013; 7: 128–134.

In this paper, we propose an in-plane switching (IPS) mode for liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that, in principle, is free of retardation of the LC cell. Basically, the optical configuration of the LC cell consists of an A-plate and an LC layer for switching between the dark and bright states. We could achieve a fast response time compared with the conventional in-plane LC cell because the free retardation condition of the proposed LC cell enables us to reduce the cell gap even by quarter-wave retardation without any change of the optimized LC material in the transmissive mode. Experiments for verification of the proposed in-plane switching LC cells have shown a significant reduction of the rising time and falling time simultaneously due to the small cell gap. Furthermore, we also proposed an optical configuration for wide viewing property of the retardation free IPS LCD by applying the optical films. We proved the wide-view property of the retardation free IPS LCD by comparing its optical luminance with the calculated optical property of the conventional IPS LCD.

In this paper, we propose a numerical modeling method that can calculate the hydrodynamic behavior of a micro-sized charged particle in an electrophoretic cell. In order to simulate the electrokinetic characteristics of a particle in a real cell, we applied the electrostatic body force of the particle to the total dynamic interaction force and calculated the electrophoretic mobility so that we could calculate the dynamic response of the particle in a viscous fluid. We compared the calculated result with the experimental result of a horizontal switching electrophoretic cell for verification.

Conventional noise reduction filtering schemes realize limited improvements of the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) in the low-level noisy images. The flatness degree and the edge information are effectively used to estimate the noise volume. We propose a noise estimator for reducing noise in the AWGN (additive white gaussian noise) corrupted images using three intermediate image maps (FGM(flatness gray map), FIM(flatness index map), NEM(noise estimate map)). The proposed noise estimator is fed into the conventional noise reduction filters as a pre-processor. The performance of noise reduction is tested in the various AWGN corrupted images.

The polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal (BPLC) cell has advantages such as sub-millisecond response time, wide viewing angle and no rubbing process for the alignment of liquid crystals. However, high operating voltage and low kerr constant of the polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal deteriorate the electro-optical characteristic of the polymer-stabilized BPLC cell. In this paper, we proposed novel zig-zag electrode in cell layout and confirmed that proposed electrode shape could reduce an over 25 percent of operating voltage for BPLC cell without degradation of tranmittance by using Kerr constant simulation.

Improvement of image quality has been highly demanding for users in digital imaging systems. A variety of image enhancement algorithms has been developed to control image enhancement factors. This paper presents a color image enhancement method that makes use of a space-variant luminance map (SVLM) for the local brightness characterization. Two-dimensional gamma correction combined with the SVLM is developed to increase the intensity at the dark region and vice versa at the bright region in the luminance domain. The enhanced luminance information is applied to the adaptive contrast enhancing process and the linear color restoration. The proposed algorithm reveals details of the input image as well as minimizes loss of the edge sharpness in the non-uniform and low illumination conditions. The developed enhancement process resulted in the lowest absolute mean brightness error (AMBE) in a low-complexity fashion. A series of experimental results are discussed in terms of visual quality, the enhancement performance, and the complexity.

As the physical properties of nematic liquid crystals vary with respect to temperature, the performances of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are highly dependent on temperature. Additionally, it is well known that the electro‐optic characteristics of LCDs, such as transmittance and threshold voltage, also rely on the LCD switching modes. The temperature dependence of the electro‐optic characteristics of the wide‐viewing‐angle LCD modes, such as in‐plane switching (IPS), multidomain vertical alignment by patterned electrode (PVA), and fringe‐field switching (FFS), have been studied, and the results showed that the FFS mode has lower temperature dependence compared to the IPS and PVA modes. Since the liquid crystal (LC) reorients in different ways in each mode, this result is associated with the temperature dependence of LC's bend and twist elastic constants, and also with the position of the main reorientation, either in the middle or on the surface of the LC layer.

This paper investigates the effect of the electrode edge of a patterned vertical alignment (PVA) liquid crystal (LC) device on the viewing angle characteristics. In general, a transmissive LCD applies an LC layer with half‐wave retardation for a bright state and with zero retardation for a dark state. The retardation of the LC layer would be distorted in each point, however, when a voltage is applied because of the non‐uniform voltage distribution in the electrode edge effect. In this paper, the feasibility of the full effect of the electrode edge on the viewing angle property is considered, and the optical viewing angles of the VA LCD with a uniform half‐wave LC layer and the PVA LCD with a practical non‐uniform LC layer are compared.

A bent electrode structure is proposed in the super in‐plane switching (S‐IPS) liquid crystal (LC), as it can re duce the response time without loss of transmittance in the bright state. The electrode angle in each position of the bent electrode was optimized to simultaneously achieve high transmittance and fast response time. The electro‐optical characteristics of the proposed LC cell structure were experimentally compared with those of the conventional cell. It was observed that the response time became over 8% shorter without loss of transmittance when the proposed bent structure was applied.

We propose an optical configuration of a vertical alignment (VA) liquid crystal (LC) cell to eliminate the light leakage in the diagonal direction. VA LC cell has an excellent contrast ratio in the normal direction due to the no phase‐retardation. However, change of the phase‐retardation occurs in all directions, which causes the light leakage and deteriorates the characteristics of the dark state. We designed the LC cell structure composed of multiple combinations with two A‐plates and two C‐plates in order to achieve wide viewing property on the Poincare sphere. From calculations, we show that the proposed structure can improve the viewing angle characteristics by compensating for the light leakage in all directions.

IPS and VA have evolved in various structures such as H‐IPS, AS‐IPS, and S‐PVA gain more competitiveness. The new pixel structures inherently have more domains which cause disclination areas. The effect of disclination is no longer neglected in those structures. A new simulation tool based on FAST Q‐tensor method enables one to predict the shape of disclinations and the resulting optical properties. It ensures more accurate results compared to vector‐based simulation. We applied this simulation tool for the development of 26‐inch wide monitor having H‐IPS mode.

We proposed wideband antireflective circular polarizer for realizing a true black state in all viewing directions in organic light-emitting-diode displays (OLEDs). Present commercialized wideband circular polarizer consisted of a half wave and a quarter wave plates having the refractive index parameter (Nz) of 1.5 in both films exhibits light leakage in the oblique viewing directions, deteriorating image quality of a black state. We evaluated Nzs of both films and proposed a new wideband antireflective circular polarizer with a perfect dark state in all viewing directions with Nz = 0.5 in both plates, which will greatly improve image quality of OLEDs.

With the fast Q-tensor method, which can model the defect dynamics in a liquid crystal director field, the nucleation and dynamical behavior of defects is modeled. In order to model the defect, hormeotropic aligned liquid crystal cell with step inhomogeneous electrode which has a height of $1\;{\mu}m$ is used. From the simulation, we can observe the nucleation and line of the defect from surface inhomogeneity and the experiment is performed for confirmation. The experimental result is compared with numerical modeling in order to verify the simulation of the defect nucleation.

In this paper, we propose the bistability the bistability in a chiral‐splay nematic liquid crystal cell, which is obtained by adding a chiral additive to a splay cell and introduce a novel switching method for the bistable chiral‐splay nematic cell in order to transit the LC director between the non‐twisted state with splay and the 180° twist state.

Rationale Lymph node is a preferred site for extrapulmonary tuberculosis (TB). In the thorax, mediastinal tuberculous lymph nodes can erode adjacent structures such as heart, aorta, and esophagus, forming fistula, and causing fatal consequences. However, tuberculous bronchonodal fistula as a complication of lymph node TB in adults is rarely known in terms of imaging or clinical findings. Here, a case of isolated tuberculous bronchonodal fistula appearing as the first presentation of TB in a 74-year-old male with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is reported. Patient concern A 74-year-old male with SLE visited the hospital with dry cough. In family history, his son was treated for pulmonary TB 9 years previously. Laboratory test revealed increased C-reactive protein level and erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Chest computed tomography (CT) scan revealed a necrotic lymph node in the right hilar area connected to the inferior wall of the right upper lobe bronchus and the lateral wall of bronchus intermedius. Diagnoses On bronchoscopy performed under guidance of 3-dimensionally reconstructed CT image, fistula formation between the right hilar lymph node and 2 bronchi (the right upper lobe and intermediate bronchus) was confirmed. Sputum culture revealed growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Intervention Anti-TB medication with isoniazid, ethambutol, pyrazinamide, and moxifloxacin for 9 months. Outcome The patient's symptom was gradually improved. Follow-up bronchoscopy performed at 3 months after starting the medication revealed decreased size of the fistula. Lessons This is a rare case of bronchonodal fistula appearing as the first presentation of TB in a 74-year-old male patient with SLE. CT provided useful information regarding the origin and progress of the disease.