• Korean Journal of Oriental Medicine
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.89-95
• /
• 2008

A tongue shows physiological and clinicopathological changes of inner organs. Visual inspection of a tongue is not only convenient but also non-invasive. To develop an automat ic tongue diagnosis system for an objective and standardized diagnosis, the separation of the tongue are a from a facial image and the detection of coatings, spots and cracks are inevitable but difficult since the colors of a tongue, lips, and skin in a mouth as well as those of tongue furs and body are similar. The propose d method includes preprocessing with down-sampling and edge enhancement, over-segmentation, detecting positions with a local minimum over shading from the structure of a tongue, and correcting local minima or detecting edge with color difference. The proposed method produces the region of a segmented tongue, and then decomposes the color components of the region into hue, saturation and brightness, resulting in classifying the regions of tongue furs(coatings) into kinds of coatings and substance and segmenting them. Spots are detected by using local maxima and the variation of saturation, and cracks are searched by using local minima and the directivity of dark areas in brightness. The results illustrate the segmented region with effective information, excluding a non-tongue region and also give us accurate discrimination of coatings and the precise detection of spots and cracks. It can be used to make an objective and standardized diagnosis for an u-Healthcare system as well as a home care system.

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

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.226-231
• /
• 2019

A WTCI is an important criteria for evaluating an mount of patient's tongue coating in tongue diagnosis. However, Previous WTCI tongue coating evaluation methods is a most of quantitatively measuring ration of the extracted tongue coating region and tongue body region, which has a non-objective measurement problem occurring by exposure conditions of tongue image or the recognition performance of tongue coating. Therefore, a WTCI based on deep learning is proposed for classifying an amount of tonger coating in this paper. This is applying the AI deep learning method using big data. to WTCI for evaluating an amount of tonger coating. In order to verify the effectiveness performance of the deep learning in tongue coating evaluating method, we classify the 3 types class(no coating, some coating, intense coating) of an amount of tongue coating by using CNN model. As a results by testing a building the tongue coating sample images for learning and verification of CNN model, proposed method is showed 96.7% with respect to the accuracy of classifying an amount of tongue coating.

• Journal of Oral Medicine and Pain
• /
• v.47 no.3
• /
• pp.109-116
• /
• 2022

Purpose: This study was conducted to analyze the clinical characteristics and distribution of the tongue-related diagnoses in patients with tongue symptoms. Methods: The subjects were patients who visited Chosun University Dental Hospital with tongue symptoms from January 1, 2021, to December 31, 2021. We analyzed 491 patients (139 males and 352 females) with tongue-related diagnostic code names in the Korean Standard Classification of Disease (KCD) in the Electronic Medical Record (Dentopinformation Technology Co., Seoul, Korea). Results: On analyzing the diagnoses of tongue diseases using the KCD, glossopyrosis (44.8%) and painful tongue (15.2%) showed high rates. Of the 491 patients, 139 (28.3%) were males and 352 (71.7%) were females, and the average age was 58.1 years. As for systemic diseases, there were many patients with diseases of the circulatory system (27.0%) and endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic diseases (13.7%). Tongue symptoms were discomfort in 58 patients, pain in 329 patients, paresthesia in 10 patients, burning sensations in 222 patients, dysgeusia in 25 patients, dryness in 110 patients, fissures in 57 patients, and other symptoms in 72 patients. Areas with tongue symptoms were the anterior area in 102 patients, the lateral area in 140 patients, the posterior area in 12 patients, the dorsal area in 140 patients, the ventral area in 42 patients, and which area in 126 patients overall. Patients with burning mouth syndrome and oral candidiasis had significantly more tongue symptoms. Conclusions: Patients with tongue symptoms exhibited a variety of tongue diseases. Tongue symptoms were more common in women over 50 years of age and were frequently seen in patients with burning mouth syndrome and oral candidiasis.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.141-146
• /
• 2016

In this paper, we apply limited area mask operation and active contour model to accurately detect tongue area outline in tongue diagnosis system. To accurately analyze the properties of the tongue, first, the tongue area to be detected. Therefore an effective segmentation method for detecting the edge of tongue is very important. It experimented with tongue image DB consists of 20~30 students 30 people. Experiments on real tongue image show the good performance of this method. Experimental results show that the proposed method extracts object boundaries more accurately than existing methods without mask operation.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
• /
• v.21 no.3
• /
• pp.113-118
• /
• 2000

Objectives : Stroke patients have continuously increased and many studies have been performed to predict their prognosis. Tongue Inspection is a diagnostic method that has been widely used in oriental medicine. The aim of this study was to examine if stroke patients' motor recovery might be related to tongue inspection. Methods : MBI(Modified Barthel Index) and tongue inspection of stroke patients within 3 days of onset were assessed on admission and at 10 days following admission. Results : Functional recovery was significantly better in those who showed favorable changes of tongue, especially in tongue coat color(P=0.030) and thick and thin tongue coat(P=0.092). Conclusions : The results suggest that tongue inspection can be used to predict a prognosis of early stage stroke patients.

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

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
• /
• v.33 no.1
• /
• pp.1-13
• /
• 2012

Background : In oriental medicine, the status of the tongue is an important indicator to diagnose the condition of one's health, such as physiological and the clinicopathological changes of internal organs. A tongue diagnosis is not only convenient but also non-invasive, and therefore widely used in Oriental medicine. However, the tongue diagnosis is greatly affected by examination circumstances, patient's posture, and doctor's diagnosis criteria. Objectives : This study was designed to assure the necessity for standardization of tongue diagnosis based on diagnostic criteria of tongue coating thickness (TCT). Methods : Thirty tongue photographs were acquired and analyzed by digital tongue diagnosis system (DTDS) which measured the percentage of TCT on the tongue surface. Fifteen oriental medical doctors evaluated TCT in 30 photographs. Afterward, the 15 assessors were trained for diagnostic criteria of TCT and evaluated the photographs again. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to obtain the agreement rate among the 15 assessors and the agreement rate between assessors' TCT scores and DTDS values. Results : The agreement rate among the 15 assessors after training was higher than before training. The agreement rate between assessors' TCT scores and DTDS values after training was also higher than before training. Furthermore, the difference of the agreement rate between before and after training was significant (p<0.05). Conclusions : The standardization of diagnostic criteria of TCT increased the agreement rate among the assessors and the agreement rate between assessors' TCT scores and DTDS values. Therefore, the standardization of diagnostic criteria is expected to contribute to the objectification and quantification of the tongue diagnosis system.

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

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
• /
• v.38 no.4
• /
• pp.547-551
• /
• 2011

Purpose: Pierre Robin sequence is a congenital malformation in which micrognathia causes glossoptosis and airway obstruction. If conservative treatment fails, surgical procedures such as tongue-lip adhesion can be performed. However, this procedure remains a subject of debate, with favorable results being countered by reports of complications. To overcome the above limitations, we revised the traditional method of tongue-lip adhesion using an alveolar protector. Methods: Between 1992 and 2011, a total of eight patients were identified with Pierre Robin sequence and were treated with tongue-lip adhesion. Two of these eight tongue-lip adhesion procedures were performed with an alveolar protector. The operative technique for tongue-lip adhesion was similar to that described in other published reports. The alveolar protector was inserted between the ventral surface of the tip of the tongue and the lower labial sulcus. Results: Tongue-lip adhesion failed in two patients because of wound dehiscence. The primary surgical success rate was 66.7%. In the two tongue-lip adhesion procedures performed with the alveolar protector, we observed no postoperative complications. Conclusion: Resistance to traction of the tongue can be encountered with nonunionized symphysis menti, causing loosening of the traction suture through the symphysis menti. This can lead to backward positioning of tongue, resulting in dehiscence of tongue lip adhesion. The alveolar protector is a good adjunct to tongue-lip adhesion because this method avoids postoperative loosening of the traction suture and wound dehiscence. It is a simple and effective auxiliary method that yields functional improvement.