Tongue Color Analysis and Disease Diagnosis Based on a Computer Vision System

Abstract

The tongue reflects the state of the internal organs of the body and their abnormal behavior, such as problems of the heart, liver, pancreas, stomach, intestines, blood diseases, etc., which leads to changes in some of the features and characteristics of the tongue. The most important of which is the color of the tongue, which can be adopted as a vital criterion that can be used in computerized diagnostic systems. Quantitative diagnosis of the tongue requires some devices, including image acquisition devices such as cameras, light sources, filters, color checkers, and image analysis and processing devices by applying some algorithms or image processing and color correction programs in addition to the computer. These devices are called Tongue Diagnostic Systems. This study proposes a real-time imaging system to diagnose some diseases related to tongue color using a Webcam under specific conditions. The proposed system was designed by MATLAB environment Graphical User Interfaces, with an audio message specifying the tongue color and type of disease and sending an SMS with the result of the examination to the mobile phone of the patient or to the person providing the care for the patient. After testing the system on a data set of 50 images, the preliminary results showed that the proposed system gives diagnosis accurate rate of 94% compared to laboratory results. With ease of use and implementation and low cost. This gives impetus to further studies to apply computerized diagnosis in medical applications, to enhance the medical reality, monitor patient health, and make an accurate diagnosis.