• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.125-131
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• 2016

Tongue image segmentation is critical for automation of the tongue diagnosis system. However, most image segmentation methods for tongue diagnosis systems in oriental medicine have been proposed as user-based manual types or semi-automatic types. This study proposed a new method for tongue image segmentation, which is the most important image processing stage for complete automation of the tongue diagnosis system in oriental medicine. The proposed method improved the conventional snake algorithm, by making improvement on the internal energy function so that, as the points move outward reversely, the snake energy function is minimized, by using the image characteristics of tongue images. To calculate external energy, hierarchical spatial filtering is applied to ensure resistance against noise. Also, The proposed method was tested by using sample images and actual images, and showed more robustness against the background noise than the conventional snake algorithm. And, when one selected point was moved by the improved snake algorithm, energy values at the starting, middle, and end points were analyzed, and showed robustness that does not fall in the local minima.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.157-174
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• 2014

Objectives : The aims of this study were to evaluate the diagnostic values of tongue coating thickness and sterno-costal angle as the quantitative diagnostic indicators in functional dyspepsia. Methods : We surveyed 60 functional dyspepsia patients recruited by the clinical trial, 'Clinical Trial for Evaluation on Availability of tongue diagnosis system (CTS-1000) : a Pilot study'. The patients were classified into three groups according to Rome III criteria for functional dyspepsia, and categorized into five groups according to Instrument of pattern identification for functional dyspepsia. Nepean dyspepsia index-Korean version (NDI-K) score, tongue coating thickness (percentage of tongue coating by tongue diagnosis system (CTS-1000), and weight of tongue coating by microbalance), sterno-costal angle, duration of illness and body mass index (BMI) were investigated. Results : Among the 5 types by instrument of pattern identification for functional dyspepsia, a significant difference of percentage of tongue coating was found. Percentage of tongue coating and weight of tongue coating showed significant correlation with total NDI-K score. Sterno-costal angle showed strong positive correlation with BMI and also showed significant difference between the non-overweight (BMI<23, n=32) and overweight ($BMI{\geq}23$, n=28) groups. Conclusions : Tongue coating thickness showed its potential as a new quantitative diagnostic indicator of functional dyspepsia. Further studies on the sterno-costal angle are anticipated to evaluate its potential as a new quantitative diagnostic indicator.

• The Journal of the Society of Korean Medicine Diagnostics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.41-48
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• 2012

Objectives: The aims of this study are to design a optimized mechanical structure of digital tongue imaging system (DTIS) equipped with LEDs in aspects of object distance and camera angle of coverage. Methods and Results: We tried to find optimized object distance while recording a rectangular object of common tongue size. In case object distance is 22 cm or less, edge of the rectangle was not taken beyond the shooting range. In contrast, if object distance is 40 cm or more, the rectangle image was too small. Therefore when considering the variation of subjects, we selected distance of 35-40 cm as appropriate object distance for the DTIS. We also tried to find optimized angle between camera view axis and horizontal line. We photographed from the side of the face of 7 adults with exposed tongue. We drew an exposed tongue lines to connect the tongue tip points and the tongue root points by using the photos acquired from the side faces. And then we calculated the tongue exposure angles between the vertical line and the exposed tongue lines. Mean tongue exposure angle was $28.3^{\circ}$ when tongue was lightly exposed and $13.3^{\circ}$ when maximally. So we determined $73^{\circ}$ as appropriate slope angle of part in contact with face of the DTIS and by considering that the standard variation was great, we designed control gears to adjust the slope of the camera view axis and to regulate the object distance. Conclusions: We designed a optimized mechanical structure in object distance and slope angle of part in contact with face of the DTIS.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.45-55
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• 2013

In this study, we propose a tongue diagnosis system which detects the tongue from face image and divides the tongue area into six areas, and finally generates tongue fur ratio of each area. To detect the tongue area from face image, we use ASM as one of the active shape models. Detected tongue area is divided into six areas and the distribution of tongue coating of six areas is examined by SVM. For SVM, we use a 3-dimensional vector calculated by PCA from a 12-dimensional vector consisting of RGB, HSV, Lab, and Luv. As a result, we stably detected the tongue area using ASM. Furthermore, we recognized that PCA and SVM helped to raise the ratio of tongue coating detection.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.213-218
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• 2011

In this paper, we have developed a tongue diagnosis system using fuzzy rules. A healthy person's tongue is red in color and has less tongue coating. However, when a person suffers from a disease, the color of their tongue changes from red to white, blue, or black. Therefore, it can analyze patient's health if analyze color and coated tongue of tongue. Medical diagnosis system can automatically determines the symptoms of the disease of a patient and their and calculate the optimal acupuncture time on the basis of the patient's physical conditions, illness conditions, and age from any place and at any time. The computer simulation results have shown that electro-acupuncture administered by using the medical diagnosis system developed in this study is more effective than the conventional method.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.14B no.2
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• pp.71-80
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• 2007

In this paper, We propose face type classification, tongue region extraction and tongue color analysis method for Oriental medicine diagnosis system to supply web based medical treatment information. This presents to construct system that takes super aging society and uses ocular inspection and longue diagnosis in web-based to embody this by an IT Technology as generalization and popularization of medical benefit are social requirement and supplies medical treatment information. Place that reflect living body signal of human body ordinarily and appear becomes iris or tongue, five sensory organs etc. This paper proposes classification of face type, extraction of five sensory organs for observing a person's shape and color among diseases diagnosis based on home health care that propose to develop and region extraction and color analysis etc, of tongue which intensively represents the bio-signals of human-beings. Finally, the effectiveness of this paper is verified by several experiments.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.522-532
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• 2011

In Oriental medicine, the status of a tongue is the important indicator to diagnose the condition of internal organs in a body. A tongue diagnosis is not only convenient but also non-invasive, and therefore widely used in Oriental medicine. But tongue diagnosis has some problems that should be objective and standardized, it also exhaust the diagnosis tool that can help for oriental medicine doctor's decision-making. In this paper, to solve the this problem we propose a method that calculates the tongue geometry information for effective tongue diagnosis analysis. Our method is to extract the tongue region for using improved snake algorithm, and calculates the geometry information by using convex hull and In-painting. In experiment, our method has stable performance as 7.2% by tooth plate and 8.5% by crack in region difference ratio.

• Korean Journal of Oriental Medicine
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.119-124
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• 2007

Introduction: In Oriental medicine, the status of tongue is the important indicator to diagnose one's health, because it represents physiological and clinicopathological changes of inner parts of the body. The method of tongue diagnosis is not only convenient but also non-invasive, so tongue diagnosis is most widely used in Oriental medicine. By the way, since tongue diagnosis is affected by examination circumstances a lot, its performance depends on a light source, degrees of an angle, a medical doctor's condition etc. Therefore, it is not easy to make an objective and standardized tongue diagnosis. In order to solve this problem, in this study, we tried to design a discriminant function for thick and thin coating with color vectors of preprocessed image. Method: 52 subjects, who were diagnosed as white-coated tongue, were involved. Among them, 45 subjects diagnosed as thin coating and 7 subjects diagnosed as thick coating by oriental medical doctors, and then their tongue images were obtained from a digital tongue diagnosis system. Using those acquired tongue images, we implemented two steps: Preprocessing and image analyzing. The preprocessing part of this method includes histogram equalization and histogram stretching at each color component, especially, intensity and saturation. It makes the difference between tongue substance and tongue coating was more visible, so that we can separate tongue coating easily. Next part, we analyzed the characteristic of color values and found the threshold to divide tongue area into coating area. Then, from tongue coating image, it is possible to extract the variables that were important to classify thick and thin coating. Result : By statistical analysis, two significant vectors, associated with G, were found, which were able to describe the difference between thick and thin coating very well. Using these two variables, we designed the discriminant function for coating classification and examined its performance. As a result, the overall accuracy of thick and thin coating classification was 92.3%. Discussion : From the result, we can expect that the discriminant function is applicable to other coatings in a similar way. Also, it can be used to make an objective and standardized diagnosis.

• The Journal of the Society of Korean Medicine Diagnostics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.47-54
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• 2011

In traditional Korean medicine, inspection of the tongue is an important method of making medical diagnoses and determining prognosis. We surveyed the fluorescence characteristics of the tongue coat in the ultraviolet light. The tongue coat comprises micro-organisms, blood metabolites, leukocytes from periodontal pockets, large amounts of desquamated epithelial cells released from the oral mucosa and different nutrients. In the ultraviolet light tissues of the oral cavity generally emit weak red or green fluorescence, which is not easily seen by the human eye, but is readily detected. This fluorescence has been proved to be due to the production of porphyrins by oral micro-organisms. While the composition of motile micro-organisms on the dorsum of the tongue is not constant, variations also occur persistingly in the fluorescence characteristics of the tongue coat. But because live bacteria contain a variety of intracellular biomolecules that have specific excitation and emission wavelength spectra characterizing their intrinsic fluorescence, the tongue coat emits fluorescence. the tongue itself, on the other hand, emits very weak or not fluorescence. In conclusion, we suggests that the uncoated tongue area be eliminated from the coated tongue area with the difference between the fluorescence characteristics of the tongue and that of the tongue coat.

• Korean Journal of Oriental Medicine
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• v.13 no.2 s.20
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• pp.47-52
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• 2007

In Oriental medicine, the status of tongue is the important indicator to diagnose one's health, because it represents physiological and clinicopathological changes of inner parts of the body. The method of tongue diagnosis is not only convenient but also non-invasive, therefore, tongue diagnosis is one of the most widely used in Oriental medicine. But tongue diagnosis is affected by examination circumstances a lot. It depends on a light source, degrees of an angle, doctor's condition and so on. So it is not easy to make an objective and standardized tongue diagnosis. As part of way to solve this problem, in this study, we tried to design a discriminant function for white and yellow coating with multi-dimensional color vectors. There were 62 subjects involved in this study, among them 48 subjects diagnosed as white-coated tongue and 14 subjects diagnosed as yellow-coated tongue by oriental doctors. And their tongue images were acquired by a well-made Digital Tongue Diagnosis System. From those acquired tongue images, each coating section were extracted by oriental doctors, and then mean values of multi -dimensional color vectors in each coating section were calculated. By statistical analysis, two significant vectors, R in RGB space and H in HSV space, were found that they were able to describe the difference between white coating section and yellow coating section very well. Using these two values, we designed the discriminant function for coating classification and examined how good it works. As a result, the overall accuracy of coating classification was 98.4%. We can expect that the discriminant function for other coatings can be obtained in a similar way. Furthermore, if an automated segmentation algorithm of tongue coating is combined with these discriminant functions, an automated tongue coating diagnosis can be accomplished.