Contemporary Study of Tongue Diagnosis of Chinese Medicine An Additional Study about The Relationship of Tongue States to Functional Disorders of the Lung in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases

• Main Authors: Chen, Jian-Jung, 陳建仲
• Other Authors: Ma, Chien-Chung
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/19541458698748940911

博士 === 中國醫藥學院 === 中國醫學研究所 === 87 === The aim of this thesis is to establish the scientific bases of Chinese medical tongue diagnosis. The first step is to create the best environment for taking accurate photographs of the tongue. The second is to apply the color model to automatically visually separate the tongue fur and tongue body. The third step is to investigate the relationship of tongue states to functional disorders of the lung in chronic obstructive lung diseases in the clinical context. The environment created was as follows: RB5000 light set with color-temperature of 5,300ok and a luminance of 3,100 Lux. A Nikon E2 digital camera with a Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/ 2.8D lens, an exposure speed of 1/125 seconds and aperture of f11 was used and gray card correction was performed regularly. A special fixture was designed with a chin-rest, and placed in a darkroom. Subjects were instructed to protrude their tongues to ensure a standard position of the tongue. The processing procedure involved extracting features from the photographic images of the tongue on the basis of RGB color components. The differences of color in the tongue and its surrounding areas were enhanced and discriminated by a contour procedure. The contour of the tongue corresponded to that perceived by human vision. The color, thickness, amount, and distribution of the tongue fur were then derived. As to the relationship between the state of the lung function and the condition of the tongue, the results show that the yellow tongue fur and the purple tongue are predominant in patients suffering from severe functional disorders of the lung. This study thus has established a valid program for differentiating white from yellow tongue fur, and red from purple tongue body. It shows that digital image processing is appropriate for the scientific study of Chinese medical tongue diagnosis.