• 동의생리병리학회지
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• 제34권4호
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• pp.191-200
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• 2020

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the effect of tongue color change due to food ingestion on tongue diagnosis by both Korean Medicine doctors and digital tongue diagnosis system. In order to obtain objective and quantitative data, we used digital camera to collect the data. Prior to our investigation, we conducted a brief survey of 26 Korean Medicine doctors and found out that tongue diagnosis is frequently used and food-stained tongue could be commonly observed in clinics. Depending on their color, viscosity, and amount of intake, various foods caused stains with different colors and thicknesses. Also, duration and amount of food stain on tongue were different from person to person. Since coffee-stained tongue was the most frequently observed one in clinics according to the survey, we used coffee to evaluate the effect of food-stained tongue on tongue diagnosis. Korean Medicine doctors tended to interpret coffee-stained tongue as having yellow tongue coat but their judgement on tongue body color did not differ in spite of the coffee stains. Meanwhile, tongue diagnosis system algorithm tended to judge coffee-stained tongue as having normal but yellowish tongue coat and reddish tongue body. Altogether, food color on tongue can influence tongue diagnosis outcomes. Further research is needed in order to develop more efficient tongue diagnosis algorithm and digital medical service system.

• 동의생리병리학회지
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• 제19권5호
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• pp.1437-1442
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• 2005

Tongue Diagnosis is the important traditional oriental medical diagnosis method that observes not only the general physiological state but also some kinds of disease. However, manual tongue diagnosis is much influenced by surrounding illumination. Therefore, Digital Tongue Inspection System(DigiTis) is needed for the quantification of objective tongue information, In this research, Tongue images of 98 malignant Neoplasm patients and 34 normal persons were collected by Digital Tongue Inspection System. Statistical analysis of tongue images and patient data indicates that cancer group has more blue-purple components in tongue body(舌質) and yellow components in tongue coating than normal group. Also, there are a lot of rose-pink components in the cancer group of second stage and blue-purple components in the cancer group of third or fourth stage. Our study shows that tongue image is a useful index for distinction between disease and health. Furthermore we need more extended research through the additional sampling and various disease.

• 대한한의학회지
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• 제27권2호
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• pp.134-144
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• 2006

Tongue diagnosis is an important diagnostic method in traditional Oriental medicine. It has been especially accepted that quantitative analysis of tongue images allows the accurate diagnosis of the exterior-interior and cold-heat patterns of a patient. However, to ensure stable and reliable results, the color reproduction of such images must first be error-tree. Moreover, tongue diagnosis is much influenced by the surrounding illumination and subjective color recognition, so it has to be performed objectively and quantitatively using a digital diagnostic machine. In this study, 457 tongue images of outpatients were collected using the Digital Tongue Inspection System. Through statistical analysis, the result shows that the heat and cold patterns can be distinguished clearly based on the hue value of the tongue images. The average hue value (1.00) of the tongue's image in the cold pattern is higher than that in the heat pattern (0.99).

• 동의생리병리학회지
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• 제23권1호
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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.

• 대한한방내과학회지
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• 제33권1호
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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.

• 전기학회논문지
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• 제56권11호
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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.

• Journal of Multimedia Information System
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• 제6권2호
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• pp.99-106
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• 2019

In traditional Chinese medical (TCM) science, tongue images can be observed for medical diagnosis; however, the tongue diagnosis of TCM is influenced by the subjective factors of doctors, and the diagnosis results vary from person to person. Quantitative TCM tongue diagnosis can improve the accuracy of diagnosis and increase the application value. In this paper, digital image processing and pattern recognition technologies are employed on mobile device to classify tongue images collected in different health states. First, through grayscale integral projection processing, the trough is found to localize the tongue body. Then the tongue body image is transferred from RGB color space to HSV color space, and the average H and S values are considered as the color features. Finally, the diagnosis results are obtained according to the relationship between the color characteristics and physical symptoms.

• 대한한의진단학회지
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• 제16권3호
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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.

• 한국정보통신학회논문지
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• 제20권4호
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• pp.826-832
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• 2016

본 논문에서는 고가의 디지털 설진 장비와 특별한 장치 없이 누구나 손쉽게 사용할 수 있는 디지털 설진 시스템의 첫 단계로 미각 영역별 균열 유무를 판별하는 시스템을 제안한다. 훈련 DB는 한방 병원에서 수집한 사진 261장을 바탕으로 Haar-like feature, Adaboost 학습을 하였다. 학습된 결과를 통하여 입력영상으로부터 혀 후보영역을 검출하고, 검출된 혀 후보영역으로부터 혀 영역만을 분리하기 위하여 261장의 훈련 DB의 HSV 컬러모델의 Hue 성분 평균 값을 산출하였다. 검출된 혀 윤곽으로부터 Connected Component Labeling을 통하여 혀 영역을 분리 하였다. 분리된 혀 영역의 상대적 너비와 높이를 이용하여 미각 영역별 로 분할하였다. 분할된 미각 영역별 영상은 Gray영상으로 변환하고, 각각의 영역별 평균 밝기를 산출하여 이진화하였다. 이진화 영상에 Connected Component Labeling을 통하여 균열 유무를 판별하였다.

• 전자공학회논문지SC
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• 제45권6호
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• pp.123-131
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• 2008

한의학에서 혀의 상태는 인체 내부의 생리적 병리적 변화와 같은 건강 상태를 진단하는 중요한 지표로 활용된다. 혀의 상태를 진단하는 방법(설진)은 편리할 뿐 아니라 비침습적이므로, 한의학에서 널리 활용되고 있다. 하지만, 설진은 광원이나 환자의 자세, 의사의 건강 조건과 같은 검사 환경에 따라 많은 영향을 받는다. 객관적이고 표준화된 진단을 위한 자동 설진 시스템을 개발하기 위하여 촬영된 얼굴 영상으로부터 혀를 영역분할하고 설태를 분류하는 것은 필수적이지만 혀와 입술, 입 근처의 피부색이 서로 유사하므로 쉽지 않은 일이다. 제안된 방법은 전처리 과정과 영역분할, 혀의 구조로부터 발생하는 음영 영역의 지역 최소값 위치 검색, 지역 최소값의 교정, 컬러의 차이를 최대로 하는 위치를 찾는 컬러 경계면 탐색, 척의 기하적인 특성에 일치하는 경계면 선택, 경계면 평활화로 구성되어 있으며, 여기서 전처리 과정은 계산량의 감소를 위한 부 표본화, 히스토그램 평활화, 경계면 강화를 수행한다. 이러한 시스템적인 과정을 거치면, 영역분할된 혀를 획득할 수 있게 된다. 제안된 방법으로 분할된 영역은 초과적으로 혀가 아닌 영역을 제외해 낼 뿐 아니라 정확한 진단을 위해 중요한 정보를 제공함을 한의사의 진단 유효도 평가점수를 통해 확인할 수 있었다. 제안된 방법은 진단의 객관화와 표준화에 기여할 뿐만 아니라 u-Healthcare 시스템에도 활용 가능하다.