• Journal of Korean Medicine Rehabilitation
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.149-157
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• 2013

Objectives This study was designed to: (1) investigate the clinical feature of tongue diagnosis, (2) make an observation of significant changes in tongue diagnosis according to the patient's physical condition and laboratory result and (3) identify clinical efficacy of tongue diagnosis. Methods 300 patients' tongue diagnosis results were analyzed and the patients were divided to each group according to the physical condition and laboratory result. Then, chi-square test was performed to assess statistical significance between tongue diagnosis results of each group. Results As a result of analyzing the spread of tongue diagnosis according to the patient's physical condition and laboratory result, 18 groups had statistical significance related to specific tongue color and tongue coating. Conclusions Even if there would be possible misinterpretations in one-to-one match between the tongue diagnosis and certain diseases, we identified that tongue diagnosis results were changed somewhat related to patient's physical condition with some tendency and tongue diagnosis could be used for meaningful clinical diagnostic tool.

• 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 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 Korean Medicine Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology and Dermatology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.212-221
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• 1999

Tongue examination is the most unique and important diagnostic method of oriental medicine. It reveals patients condition and give some information about direction of therapy and background of disease as well as produces clue of duration of disease changing that grasps it from outside. The aims of this study show that results of tongue examination is related to somewhat special pattern. we study 27 patients(age of means: 63.01 years old, male: 14, female: 13) who come to Wonkwang University Oriental-Medicine Hospital at Chonju with diabetes mellitus or diabetes mellitus complications. Tongue colors of this study result in pale-red 8 cases, pale 6 cases, red 6 cases, crimson 5 cases, blue-green-purple 2 cases and tongue fur of this study result in white-fur 16 cases, yellow-fur 7 cases, black-fur 1 case, none-fur 3 cases. And the condition of tongue fur with grimy and thin result in thin-white-fur 12 cases, white-grimy-fur 4 cases, thin-yellow-fur 5 cases, grimy-yellow-fur 2 cases, black-fur 1 case. Means level of fasting glucose during 7 days was $223.24{\pm}32.l7mg/dl$ and postprandial 2hours was $286.37{\pm}24.54mg/dl$ There were no changes in tongue body and tongue color but changes occur in tongue fur with 9cases in this period. 5 cases of patient make a difference between FBS(fasting blood glucose) and postprandial blood glucose level more than l00mg/dl (2 cases of patient with thin-white-fur gradually turned to slight-yellow-fur. There were no changes in 2 cases of patient with crimson-none-fur and pale-white-fur. 1 case of patient with slimy-yellow-fur turned to black fur.) 11 cases of patient had lesser than $10\%$ hemoglobin $A_lC$ and tongue color of these patient were pale-red 5cases, pale 2 cases, red 2 cases, crimson 2 cases. 16 cases of patient had more than $10\%$ Hemoglobin $A_1C$ and tongue color of these patients were pale-red 3 cases, pale 4 cases, red 4 cases, crimson 3 cases, blue 2 cases. This result shows that quantity of Hemoglobin $A_1C$ make a somewhat role in tongue color. The above results show that tongue color, fur color, condition and change of fur in diabetes mellitus patients is various in pale-red, pale, crimson, none-fur. So it is difficult to give an exact diagnosis on pathology of diabetes mellitus only with tongue examination because there are a little matches between blood glucose level, prevalence-period, short-term blood glucose regulation and tongue and fur colors.

• 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.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.123-131
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• 2008

In Oriental medicine, the status of a tongue is the important indicator to diagnose the condition of one's health like the physiological and the clinicopathological changes of internal organs in a body. A tongue diagnosis is not only convenient but also non-invasive, and therefore widely used in Oriental medicine. However, the tongue diagnosis is affected by examination circumstances like a light source, patient's posture, and doctor's condition a lot. To develop an automatic tongue diagnosis system for an objective and standardized diagnosis, segmenting a tongue region from a facial image captured and classifying tongue coating are inevitable but difficult since the colors of a tongue, lips, and skin in a mouth are similar. The proposed method includes preprocessing, over-segmenting, detecting the edge with a local minimum over a shading area from the structure of a tongue, correcting local minima or detecting the edge with the greatest color difference, selecting one edge to correspond to a tongue shape, and smoothing edges, where preprocessing consists of down-sampling to reduce computation time, histogram equalization, and edge enhancement, which produces the region of a segmented tongue. Finally, the systematic procedure separated only a tongue region from a face image with a tongue, which was obtained from a digital tongue diagnosis system. Oriental medical doctors' evaluation for the results illustrated that the segmented region excluding a non-tongue region provides important information for the accurate diagnosis. The proposed method can be used for an objective and standardized diagnosis and for an u-Healthcare system.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.187-197
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• 1999

To assess the usefulness of tongue inspection for evaluating the Pattern identification in oriental medicine, we observed stroke patient's tongue and tongue coat and compared it with Pattern identification. The test group was composed of 85 acute stroke stage patients(within 72 hours of onset). Subjects were randomly selected from stroke patients admitted in the KyungHee University, Hospital of Oriental Medicine from December 1 1998 to June 30 1999. We took pictures of patient's tongue and tongue coat within 72hours from onset and checked Pattern identification at the same time. Tongues colored pale rose or red greatly outnumbered other colors. Tongue shape tended to be prickly or fissured, and tongue condition tended to be unflexible or deviated. Regarding tongue coat color, there were great amounts of yellow or clark yellow tongue coats, which were moist, thick or greasy in substance. The red tongue was significantly related to Fire-heat and deficiency of Yin syndrome, while faint white tongue to Damp syndrome(P=0.006). In terms of tongue coat, thin coat was related to Wind and Fire-heat syndromes, thick coat to Damp and Blood stasis syndrome, respectively (P=0.002). In conclusion, we thought that tongue inspection could be a useful Oriental medicine diagnosis in stroke.

• 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.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.10-15
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• 2003

Background and Objectives : Ankyloglossia, commonly known as tongue-tie, is the result of a short, fibrous lingual frenulum or highly attached geioglossus muscle. This condition may cause sucking and swallowing problems, articulation disorders, interference with the tongue's cleansing action, increased the potential for caries, and inability to lick the lips, play a wind instrument, and 'french kiss' Treatment is surgical procedure. In the most cases, horizontal sectioning and mucosal suture(the conventional procedure) is preferred, but in some cases, the Z-plastic procedure is effective. This study is aimed to compare the result of the two procedures. Materials and Methods : Twenty tongue-tie patients underwent operation. Ten patients were treated with the Z-plastic procedure and ten patients were treated with the conventional method randomly. We checked preoperative mobile tongue length, postoperative mobile tongue length, operation time and postoperative wound states. Results : Among the 20 cases of tongue-tie, 2 cases are excepted due to pre-operative state, thus we compared 18 cases of tongue-tie patients. There is no statistically significant difference between the two procedures except in operation time. The Z-plastic procedure apparently needs a little more operating time. Conclusion : Patients treated with the Z-plastic procedures appeared to have better outcomes, but the data shows no statistical significance except in operating time. Consequently, the Z-plastic procedure is indicated in a limited amount of cases.