• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 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 the Society of Korean Medicine Diagnostics
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.24-33
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• 2009

Objectives : This study was aimed to clarify the relationship between the tongue diagnosis of dampness-phlegm and hyperlipidemia in acute stroke patients. Methods : We analyzed the data of 1405 patients with acute stroke in 10 oriental medical hospitals from November 2006 to December 2008. We classified patients into two groups, dampness-phlegm and non dampness-phlegm by tongue diagnosis such as the white coating of the tongue, thick coating of the tongue, swollen tongue and teeth printed tongue which is oriental medical diagnosis. And We analyzed their characteristics with type of stroke and lipid blood level. Results : 1. There was no significant difference of stroke type between the dampness-phlegm tongue diagnosis group and the non dampness-phlegm tongue diagnosis group. 2. The ratio of SVO was higher in dampness-phlegm tongue diagnosis group (76.06%) than the non dampness-phlegm tongue diagnosis group (61.26%). 3. According to the blood test, the dampness-phlegm tongue diagnosis group showed higher in total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglyceride than the control group. 4. Total cholesterol and HDL cholesterol were significant higher in dampness-phlegm tongue diagnosis than the control group. Conclusion : According to the analysis, the relationship between the tongue diagnosis of dampness-phlegm and hyperlipidemia in acute stroke patients were more clarified. Based on these results, more prospective studies are to be done with more clinical data.

• Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2010

1. Objectives: This study was performed to research the relationship between Sasang Constitution and characteristics of tongue diagnosis based on Donguisusebowon's Experience prescriptions(經驗方). 2. Methods: We searched tongue diagnosis factors in Donguisusebowon and classified this. Based on Donguisusebowon's Experience prescriptions(經驗方), we find tongue diagnosis factors in 6 contemporary Oriental medicine prescription books. 3. Results: Most So-eumin has white thin tongue coating and clear redish tongue color. Yellow tongue coatings are found in symptoms for Yinjinho-tang(Yinchenhao-tang), Soseungki-tang(Xiaochengqi-tang), Daeseungki-tang(Dachengqi-tang). Shortened Tongue is found in So-eumin's experience prescription and So-yangin's treat histroy. It didn't shown that So-eumin's Semen Crotonis included 6 prescritions' factors of tongue diagnosis. So-yangin's white tongue coating is found in Hyungbangpaedok-san(Jingfangbaidu-san), Sipjo-tang(Shizao-tang), Sosiho-tang(Xiaocihu-tang), Shinki-hwan(Shenqi-wan). Most of other So-yangin's tongue coatings are Yellowish and tongue color is deep red. Tae-eumin have thin white tongue coating at the Mahuang-tang(Mahuang-tang). Red tongue color and drying tongue are found at Jowiseungki-tang(Tiaoweichengqi-tang)Daesiho-tang(Dacihu-tang)Saengmaek-san(Shengmai-san) 4. Conclusions: Following So-eumin's Experience prescriptions, So-eumin's tongue color is clear red and tongue coatings are thin white and greasy. Following So-yangin's Experience prescriptions, So-yangin's tongue color is deep red and tongue coatings are yellowish and scarce except Exterior cold disease. And So-yangin has specific symptom of irritability, oral sores. Tae-eumin's tongue has two sides of white thin tongue coatings and Red and drying tongue.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.97-103
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• 2009

The status and the property of a tongue are the important indicators to diagnose one's health like physiological and clinicopathological changes of inner organs. However, the tongue diagnosis is affected by examination circumstances like a light source, patient's posture, and doctor's condition. To develop an automatic tongue diagnosis system for an objective and standardized diagnosis, classifying tongue coating is inevitable but difficult since the features like color and texture of the tongue coatings and substance have little difference, especially in the neighborhood on the tongue surface. The proposed method has two procedures; the first is to acquire the color table to classify tongue coatings and substance by automatically separating coating regions marked by oriental medical doctors, decomposing the color components of the region into hue, saturation and brightness and obtaining the 2nd order discriminant with statistical data of hue and saturation corresponding to each kind of tongue coatings, and the other is to apply the tongue region in an input image to the color table, resulting in separating the regions of tongue coatings and classifying them automatically. As a result, kinds of tongue coatings and substance were segmented from a face image corresponding to regions marked by oriental medical doctors and the color table for classification took hue and saturation values as inputs and produced the classification of the values into white coating, yellow coating and substance in a digital tongue diagnosis system. The coating regions classified by the proposed method were almost the same to the marked regions. The exactness of classification was 83%, which is the degree of correspondence between what Oriental medical doctors diagnosed and what the proposed method classified. Since the classified regions provide effective information, the proposed method can be used to make an objective and standardized diagnosis and applied to an ubiquitous healthcare system. Therefore, the method will be able to be widely used in Oriental medicine.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.201-210
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• 2021

In Korean medicine, tongue diagnosis is one of the important diagnostic methods for diagnosing abnormalities in the body. Representative features that are used in the tongue diagnosis include color, shape, texture, cracks, and tooth marks. When diagnosing a patient through these features, the diagnosis criteria may be different for each oriental medical doctor, and even the same person may have different diagnosis results depending on time and work environment. In order to overcome this problem, recent studies to automate and standardize tongue diagnosis using machine learning are continuing and the basic process of such a machine learning-based tongue diagnosis system is tongue segmentation. In this paper, image data is augmented based on the main tongue features, and backbones of various famous deep learning architecture models are used for automatic tongue segmentation. The experimental results show that the proposed augmentation technique improves the accuracy of tongue segmentation, and that automatic tongue segmentation can be performed with a high accuracy of 99.12%.

• Journal of Haehwa Medicine
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.143-150
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• 2012

Objectives : This study was aimed to review the trend of tongue diagnosis studies in Korean Medicine on various aspect and to suggest better studies. Method : We collected papers on tongue diagnosis studies in the internet site 'nanet, riss, dbpia, society' using the keyword 'tongue diagnosis' between 2002 and 2012. Then we analyzed them. Results : There were 33 study papers that related in tongue diagnosis between 2002 and 2012. Conclusions : To make a reproducibility and a objectivity of tongue diagnosis, it needs to have a unification of the system. So it is is necessary that having a discussion about the standard of tongue diagnosis.

• Korean Journal of Oriental Medicine
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.97-102
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• 2008

The tongue diagnosis is a diagnostic method in the oriental medicine that uses shape, substance, coating, and movement of the tongue to determine the condition of health and disease characteristics in human. Since this information, however, could be affected by subjective sense and visual information, it is difficult to obtain the objective and reproducible results. This research aims at building a reproducible tongue diagnosis system using color chart that is attached close to the face contact region. The picture of color chart is taken simultaneously with a tongue and applied to color revision. The system, in addition, is focused on providing a clear tongue image through securing a sufficient photographing distance with a surface coating mirror. The lightning part which can suppress the reflection by sputum in maximum is implemented for the objectification and quantification of the tongue diagnosis system. The face contact region is designed for consideration of a testee's convenience. To evaluate the reproducibility of the system, the CVs (coefficient of variance, %) of $L{\ast}$, $a{\ast}$ and $b{\ast}$ of red, green and blue regions in color chart are calculated, respectively. The results of all CVs shows that the tongue diagnosis system is re liable and those consequences contribute to the objectification and quantification of the tongue diagnosis 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 Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.56 no.11
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• pp.2051-2057
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• 2007

In Oriental medicine, the status of a tongue is the important indicator to diagnose one's health like physiological and clinicopathological changes of inner parts of the body. The method of tongue diagnosis is not only convenient but also non-invasive and widely used in Oriental medicine. However, tongue diagnosis is affected by examination circumstances a lot like a light source, patient's posture and doctor's condition. To develop an automatic tongue diagnosis system for an objective and standardized diagnosis, segmenting a tongue is inevitable but difficult since the colors of a tongue, lips and skin in a mouth are similar. The proposed method includes preprocessing, graph-based over-segmentation, detecting positions with a local minimum over shading, detecting edge with color difference and estimating edge geometry from the probable structure of a tongue, where preprocessing performs down-sampling to reduce computation time, histogram equalization and edge enhancement. A tongue was segmented from a face image with a tongue from a digital tongue diagnosis system by the proposed method. According to three oriental medical doctors' evaluation, it produced the segmented region to include effective information and exclude a non-tongue region. It can be used to make an objective and standardized diagnosis.

• THE JOURNAL OF KOREAN ORIENTAL ONCOLOGY
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.89-97
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• 2003

Recently, the occurrence and death rates of cancer have increased rapidly. In oriental medicine, the tongue gives some kind of special physiological information on human body. Oriental medical doctors have used information about the color, degree of wetness and shape of the patient's tongue to determine patient's disease and body condition. This fact leads us that the tongue image is one of the most important clinical data for helping doctor's decision making. It also has significant meaning to cancer patients related with traditional theory of oriental medicine. In diagnosis and treatment of cancer, tongue diagnosis can give some prognosis and change o cancer. It also detect the sign of early stage cancer, but it cannot diagnose the kind of cancer and/or benign or malignant. Nowadays BioTechnology(BT) has developed rapidly, but there are a lot of limits(economy, accuracy, clinical significance, etc). Tongue diagnosis is very economic and practical way of diagnose and has a lot of possibility of development. The need for doctors and it also helps the development of tongue diagnosis related with cancer.