• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.123-131
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• 2008

In Oriental medicine, the status of a tongue is the important indicator to diagnose the condition of one's health like the physiological and the clinicopathological changes of internal organs in a body. A tongue diagnosis is not only convenient but also non-invasive, and therefore widely used in Oriental medicine. However, the tongue diagnosis is affected by examination circumstances like a light source, patient's posture, and doctor's condition a lot. To develop an automatic tongue diagnosis system for an objective and standardized diagnosis, segmenting a tongue region from a facial image captured and classifying tongue coating are inevitable but difficult since the colors of a tongue, lips, and skin in a mouth are similar. The proposed method includes preprocessing, over-segmenting, detecting the edge with a local minimum over a shading area from the structure of a tongue, correcting local minima or detecting the edge with the greatest color difference, selecting one edge to correspond to a tongue shape, and smoothing edges, where preprocessing consists of down-sampling to reduce computation time, histogram equalization, and edge enhancement, which produces the region of a segmented tongue. Finally, the systematic procedure separated only a tongue region from a face image with a tongue, which was obtained from a digital tongue diagnosis system. Oriental medical doctors' evaluation for the results illustrated that the segmented region excluding a non-tongue region provides important information for the accurate diagnosis. The proposed method can be used for an objective and standardized diagnosis and for an u-Healthcare system.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.175-182
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• 2014

Development of an objective diagnosis index for diagnosing a the beginning nature of a disease is the most one of tongue diagnosis in the oriental medicine. However, previous systems have a difficult problem in the creation of objective diagnosis index, and focused on the expert system that can diagnose automatically without an oriental doctor behavior. Therefore, computerized assistant diagnosis software for calculating an optimized diagnosis index is proposed in this paper. This software is operated by the diagnosing behavior of oriental doctor. As developed software is a semi-automatic system, manual method is used to segment a tongue body. Futhermore, numerical diagnosis indices including the color information of non-tongue coating and tongue coating, WTCI are provided to oriental doctor automatically and real-timely. Also, probability estimation value for classifying no coating, thin coating, and thick coating is presented by using the tongue coating area ratio, and EMR chart can use for convenience of diagnosis. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the our developed software, after building a various tongue image from 60 subjects, we experimented on diagnosis image with our software. As a result, the developed software showed the 95% use-effectiveness of subjects.

• The Journal of the Society of Korean Medicine Diagnostics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.51-65
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• 2016

Objectives This study was conducted to suggest a standard operating procedure (SOP) in order to improve the reliability of tongue-image analysis system. Methods An affecting-factors list was made, which may affect the diagnostic parameters of the tongue-image analysis system. They were sub-classified into two groups: controllable and uncontrollable. Only the controllable factors, which could affect the results and easily set-up, were included into the SOP draft. Affecting factors control experiment was performed to investigate the effects of controllable factors, whose influence on diagnostic parameters of the tongue-image analysis system is ambiguous: rehearsal for tongue extrusion; alignment of camera axis; and presentation of a guideline. Three subjects volunteered for this experiment. Each of three variables was implemented twice in a random order by two operators on the subjects. Finally, 96 tongue images obtained in the aggregate. The diagnostic parameter set as a primary outcome in this experiment was the percentage of tongue coating. Results All of the control variables were not significant in both operators; however, the presentation of a guideline was relatively more affect than two other variables. Interaction effects among the variables were also insignificant. Therefore, the presentation of a guideline was included in the final SOP and the other variables were not included. Conclusions We suggested the SOP which could be used for both experimenter and subject. Moreover, Each of the SOPs applied to various types of tongue-image analysis system should be developed in order to improve the reliability.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology and Dermatology
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.118-126
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• 2007

Tongue diagnosis is a profound and special part of the whole Oriental Medicine. We examined the method, the principle and the meaning of tongue diagnosis according to a literature cited, considered a meaning of tongue diagnosis. As a result, we come to a conclusion like that. 1. Tongue is related with internal organs by meridian system, especially has a direct connection with heart and spleen. 2. The heart, a master of internal organs, has its specific opening in the tongue. The spleen, source of nutrients for growth and development, has its specific body opening in the mouth. So tongue reflects states of internal organs, Qi, blood, the constructive energy and the defensive energy. 3. When doing tongue diagnosis, we must pay attention to the position and the order of inspection of the tongue. We must diagnose by referring to a ray of light, diet, season, age, physical constitution, habit and taste, can make a accurate diagnosis. 4. We can classify constitutions, distinguish syndromes, suppose prognosis, make a prescription by using tongue diagnosis. 5. Reddened tip of the tongue represents flaring-up of the heart fire, and it means psychologic stress. Dental identations on the tongue edges represents deficiency of Qi of the spleen, and it means physiologic fatigue. 6. Through observing humidity of fur of the tongue, we can guess psychologic stress and physiologic fatigue. Through observing thickness of fur of the tongue, we can guess function of spleen and stomach.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.27 no.2 s.66
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• pp.134-144
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• 2006

Tongue diagnosis is an important diagnostic method in traditional Oriental medicine. It has been especially accepted that quantitative analysis of tongue images allows the accurate diagnosis of the exterior-interior and cold-heat patterns of a patient. However, to ensure stable and reliable results, the color reproduction of such images must first be error-tree. Moreover, tongue diagnosis is much influenced by the surrounding illumination and subjective color recognition, so it has to be performed objectively and quantitatively using a digital diagnostic machine. In this study, 457 tongue images of outpatients were collected using the Digital Tongue Inspection System. Through statistical analysis, the result shows that the heat and cold patterns can be distinguished clearly based on the hue value of the tongue images. The average hue value (1.00) of the tongue's image in the cold pattern is higher than that in the heat pattern (0.99).

• The Journal of the Society of Korean Medicine Diagnostics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2015

Objectives The purpose of this study was to survey the status of clinical use of a computerized tongue diagnosis system (CTDS) Methods We searched domestic/international articles using the CTDS from online medical databases including OASIS, NDSL and pubmed. We selected articles on clinical application or reliability of CTDS but excluded articles on mechanical design or software programming for developing a new CTDS. Finally we found 15 articles and classified the articles according to the study purpose. Results Out of the 15 articles, 8 were focused on the clinical application including halitosis, cold/heat syndrome, lung cancer, xerostomia etc. Other 5 articles were aimed at evaluating and improving reliability of CTDS. The other 2 articles were studied for development of differential diagnostic criteria on tongue coating thickness. Conclusion We found out that until now the researches on clinical application of CTDS mainly had been performed for producing a variety of CTDSs. Considering the importance of the tongue color in the traditional Korean medicine, we suggest that at first standard operating procedure for CTDS be developed and researches to develop differential diagnostic criteria on tongue body/coating color be performed and then explore its applications.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.826-832
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• 2016

In this paper, we propose a tongue diagnosis system for determining the presence of specific taste crack area as a first step in the digital tongue diagnosis system that anyone can use easily without special equipment and expensive digital tongue diagnosis equipment. Training DB was developed by the Haar-like feature, Adaboost learning on the basis of 261 pictures which was collected in Oriental medicine. Tongue candidate regions were detected from the input image by the learning results and calculated the average value of the HUE component to separate only the tongue area in the detected candidate regions. A tongue area is separated through the Connected Component Labeling from the contour of tongue detected. The palate regions were divided by the relative width and height of the tongue regions separated. Image on the taste area is converted to gray image and binarized with each of the average brightness values. A crack in the presence or absence was determined via Connected Component Labeling with binary images.

• The Journal of the Society of Korean Medicine Diagnostics
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.149-158
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• 2011

Objectives: The objective of this study is to compare the colour intensity of tongue body and that of tongue coat under the visible light and the ultraviolet light. Methods: We selected 7 subjects with completely or partially peeled tongue coat among the recruited 94 adults for the experiment. We took each tongue picture under the visible light and the ultraviolet light (315-400 nm) and then extracted sample images from the tongue body and tongue coat regions. Mean, median and mode of colour intensity from the sample images were calculated in 256 RGB system. Results: The green and the blue colour intensities of the tongue coats were significantly higher than those of the tongue bodies under the visible light. In all channels, the red, green and blue, the colour intensities of the tongue coats were significantly higher than those of the tongue bodies under the ultraviolet light. The colour differences between tongue coats and tongue bodies under the ultraviolet light were significantly higher than the colour differences under the visible light. Especially the colour difference under the ultraviolet light was highest in the green channel. Conclusions: We suggested that green colour image of the RGB system taken under the ultraviolet light could be used for more easy separating tongue coat region from tongue body.

• The Journal of the Society of Korean Medicine Diagnostics
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.225-232
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• 2013

Objectives The aim of this study is to design a part in contact with the face of computerized tongue diagnosis system (CTDS), so that external light is effectively shielded even if the facial appearance and degree of protrusion differ when a patient opens or closes his/her jaws. Methods Each of the 4 researchers manually produced clay models of the part in contact with the face of CTDS. Shielding and contact feeling of the clay models were evaluated by 20 assessors. Based on the evaluation, we selected the appropriate model and produced the final silicon model. Then we evaluated the performance of the shielding of the completed silicon model. We took tongue pictures of 60 participants with a CTDS applying the silicon model in condition with external light and without it. The color values in RGB color model and gray scale of the tongue pictures in condition with external light were compared with those without external light. Results There was no significant difference between the color values of the picture taken in condition with external light and those without external light. Conclusions We concluded that the produced part in contact with the face of CTDS can effectively block out the external light.

• The Journal of the Society of Korean Medicine Diagnostics
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.215-223
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• 2013

Objectives Although tongue diagnosis is one of major diagnostic methods in east Asian traditional medicine, the standard of normal tongue color have not established. So we tried to suggest the method to establish the standard of normal tongue color range and the pilot data about the normal range. Materials and methods: 22 precedent study papers that presented the numerical data of normal (light red) tongue color were analyzed. At the same time, 46 adult people tongue color data were also collected and analyzed. Results Precedent studies showed remarkable fluctuations of the range of normal tongue color. Collected tongue color data of the 46 people showed mean Hue value 2 and standard deviation 14 in HSB system. Additionally, 3 ways of standard establishment for normal tongue color were suggested. Conclusion We suggest statistical method as a reasonable method for tongue color standard establishment and $2{\pm}14$ as a reference Hue value for normal tongue color.