• 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 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.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.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.320-326
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• 2016

Tongue diagnosis is convenient and non-invasive method to examine the body's functional condition, and it has been frequently used in traditional Korean Medicine (KM). The aim of this study was to investigate the difference of the tongue color assessed by computerized tongue image analysis system (CTIS) between the common cold (CC) patients and healthy subjects. A total of 85 participants, including 45 CC patients without organic diseases and 40 healthy subjects, were asked to complete the CC symptom questionnaire. A tongue image was acquired by using CTIS. Color differences in Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage (CIE) L*, a* and b* between the CC patient group and the control group were analyzes by using paired t-test analysis. The variable CIE b* of the tongue body was significantly lower in CC than that in controls (P=0.019). The variable CIE L* of the tongue coating was significantly higher in CC than that in controls (P=0.032). In CC, the color of the tongue body seems to be changed to intense red color. The color of the tongue coating seems to be changed to thick fur. The present study demonstrated that the CTIS can be used as a diagnostic and monitoring tool for the objective and standardized evaluation of common cold in clinics.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.637-644
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• 2018

Objectives: In this study, the tongue features of patients with functional dyspepsia (FD) were compared with those of healthy controls. Methods: This prospective, case-control study was conducted on patients with FD and controls recruited at a single center. After screening, the subjects were allocated to the patient or control groups (patients=42, controls=40). Tongue images were acquired using a computerized tongue image acquisition system (CTIS). An independent t-test was conducted to compare the measurements from patients and controls. Binary logistic regression was performed to determine significant differences between the two groups after adjusting for age and sex. Results: The CIE $a^*$ color value in the tongue coating area was significantly lower in the patients with FD than in the controls (p=0.001). The tongue coating ratios were also significantly higher in the FD group than in the control group (p=0.003). We found that the CIE $a^*$ color value in the tongue coating area and the tongue coating ratios were significant predictive factors in both groups, based on binary regression analysis (p=0.016, 0.044, respectively). Conclusions: This study found that FD was significantly associated with CIE $a^*$ color value in the tongue coating area and tongue coating ratios. We suggest that these factors could be used as objective indicators of FD.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.242-254
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• 2023

Although upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) are common diseases, there have been no studies of their relationship with the indices obtained from tongue image analyses. The purpose of this study was to identify a tongue index through an analysis of tongue images (TIs) showing significant changes before and after treatment in patients with URTIs. A computerized tongue image acquisition system was developed to acquire TIs from subjects in the same environment. An image was taken from each of 39 URTI patients and 39 healthy controls. For the patients, images were acquired before and after treatment to identify changes. The tongue area was classified into a tongue body and a tongue coating, and the coating ratio between the two areas, the average value of the colour of each area, and teeth marks were calculated. No significant difference was observed in age or sex between the URTI patients and control participants. Heart rates were slightly different. The analysis of TIs showed that the luminance of the tongue coating and the coating area ratio were decreased, while the reddish value of the tongue body at the centre area increased as the treatment progressed. Tongue coating and body in URTIs had different colour and shape from those in the normal. It is expected that this result will contribute not only to the objectification of traditional Chinese medicine but also to diagnostic methods that do not involve face-to-face physician visit during the pandemic.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.683-687
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• 2013

Evacuation disorder(ED) is frequently observed in the elderly people. In this study, we investigated the tongue color properties in the elderly. 327 subjects were participated in this study and classified into normal group (n=95) and ED group (n=23) by two Korean Oriental Medicine doctors. The tongue images were acquired by using computerized tongue diagnosis system, and its color were linearly corrected base on CIE $L^*a^*b^*$ values of 12 color samples. The tongue region was segmented from acquired image and divided into two regions along the vertical direction. In order to estimate color properties of the tongue, a color histogram was calculated for the root region based on the CIE $L^*$ and $a^*$ values, and differences of color histogram values between normal and ED groups were computed based on the Mann-Whitney U test. As results, pixels corresponding to typical colors of the pale tongue and thin tongue coating were significantly more distributed in ED than those in normal group(p<0.05). The tongue color of the root region in ED was revealed to be different from those in healthy subjects.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.1219-1223
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• 2006

Tongue is one of the most important parts in patient diagnosis in traditional Korean(Chinese) medicine. This paper presents health monitoring method using tongue images of a person. The method uses not absolute tongue features but relative ones which are differences from reference health condition(RHC), diagnosed in hospital, for a person. A user can give tongue images to a health monitoring system everyday, which extracts regions of interest (ROI's) of the tongue, and compares their features with reference health condition. In the experiments, tongue image analysis for a person by our computerized method encouraged us that the method using tongue images can be contributed for health monitoring.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.348-360
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• 2015

Objectives From observing the tongue of a patient, one can assess the health status; this method has been frequently used in traditional Korean Medicine (KM) clinics. In particular, KM posits that the color of the tongue is highly related to digestive functions. In this study, the color of tongue and heart rate variability (HRV) were compared between chronic dyspepsia (CD) patients and healthy subjects. Methods Healthy subjects and CD patients with functional dyspepsia (FD), gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), or chronic gastritis (CG) were enrolled for the study. Profile view images of the tongue were acquired by using a computerized tongue image acquisition system (CTIS). The color of the tongue body was extracted from the non-coated region on the tongue images. Results Color differences in CIE L*a*b* color space between the three sub-types of CD patients and healthy subjects were analyzed by using multiple linear regression analysis with age and sex as the factors. The variable b* was significantly lower in GERD patients than in the controls (p=0.017). Variable a* was significantly lower in CG than in the controls (p=0.03). No significant difference was seen between FD and controls. In GERD, the tongue body seems to be intense red in color; in CG, pale red. Frequency domain analysis showed that HF was significantly lower in GERD patients than in the controls (p=0.041). Conclusions The color of the tongue body and HF of HRV can be used for diagnosing digestive functions in health care.