Abstract
Objectives: Tongue moisture is one of major features in tongue diagnosis of Oriental Medicine. But with regard to the methods to qualify the tongue moisture level, there have been no adequate modalities to satisfy clinicians' needs. So we developed an novel device and method to quantify the tongue moisture level without contact. Methods and Materials: Ratio of saturated area to total tongue area in the image captured with a spot light at various angles was calculated. We regarded that ratio represented the moisture of tongue surface. To evaluate the performance of suggested method, we observed the correlation between conventional contact method and our method with 19 healthy subjects. Results: With comparison to conventional contact method (Schirmer test), the suggested method showed good correlation (R = 0.8602, R2 = 0.7399). Conclusion: This Method could be a convenient and robust method to evaluate tongue moisture.
