For over two thousand years, visual inspection of the tongue has been a
unique and important diagnostic method of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
Observing the abnormal changes in the tongue proper and the tongue coating
can aid in diagnosing diseases. Clinic data have shown significant
connections between various viscera cancers and abnormalities in the
tongue and the tongue coating. Since the early 1980s medical professionals
in China have systematically studied the relationship between various
cancers and tongue signatures. Their results have been published in
national medical journals. For instance, China TCM Society, China
Cancer Society and TCM Diagnosis Association conducted a national
project that included cases of 12,448 cancerous patients, 1,628
non-cancerous patients and 5,578 normal patients [TCMA, 1987].
The results statistically showed that there are significant
changes of color, coating, shape and dorsum shape of the tongues of
cancerous patients versus those tongues of non-cancerous patients or
normal subjects.
Visual inspection of the tongue offers many advantages: it is a non-invasive diagnosis method, is simple and inexpensive. However, the current practice in TCM is mainly experience based or subjective. The quality of the visual inspection varies between individuals. And although there are a few experts successfully diagnosing cancers based on inspection of the tongue, their skills are not easily transferable to other medical professionals. Their expertise is limited at qualitative descriptions, not to quantitative or mathematical formulations. To circumvent this problem, We have been developing a prototype of the imaging system for the tongue inspection.
We use a digital imaging system to make a picture of a patient's tongue, then use software to extract the features from the image, and finally make a diagnosis based on quantitative models. Our goal is not to replace the conventional diagnostic methods but to give an early alert signal that can lead to further diagnosis by other methods, such as MRI, CT, X-ray, colonoscopy, etc. The novel approach has various significant advantages. First, it makes the inspection objective and repeatable so that it prevents human bias and errors. Second, it can be implemented on an inexpensive personal computer or laptop computer for clinic or family use.
Sponsor: Jewish Healthcare Foundation
Principal Investigator:
Dr. Yang Cai,
Human-Computer Interaction Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University
ycai@cmu.edu