Automated Tongue Feature Extraction for ZHENG Classification in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Abstract

ZHENG, Traditional Chinese Medicine syndrome, is an integral and essential part of Traditional Chinese Medicine theory. It defines the theoretical abstraction of the symptom profiles of individual patients and thus, used as a guideline in disease classification in Chinese medicine. For example, patients suffering from gastritis may be classified as Cold or Hot ZHENG, whereas patients with different diseases may be classified under the same ZHENG. Tongue appearance is a valuable diagnostic tool for determining ZHENG in patients. In this paper, we explore new modalities for the clinical characterization of ZHENG using various supervised machine learning algorithms. We propose a novel-color-space-based feature set, which can be extracted from tongue images of clinical patients to build an automated ZHENG classification system. Given that Chinese medical practitioners usually observe the tongue color and coating to determine a ZHENG type and to diagnose different stomach disorders including gastritis, we propose using machine-learning techniques to establish the relationship between the tongue image features and ZHENG by learning through examples. The experimental results obtained over a set of 263 gastritis patients, most of whom suffering Cold Zheng or Hot ZHENG, and a control group of 48 healthy volunteers demonstrate an excellent performance of our proposed system.

Exploring the Ligand-Protein Networks in Traditional Chinese Medicine: Current Databases, Methods and Applications

“…TCM uses the holistic method to investigate the effects of multicomponent formula across the whole organism, such as the use of a variety of "ZHENG" in TCM theory [111]. However, the only option we have to uncover the underlying mechanism of TCM at the molecular level is to make use of the theory of reductionism.…”

Using Traditional Chinese Medicine Ideas as a Mechanism to Engage People in Health Awareness

“…TCM applies different therapeutic methods to enhance the body's resistance to diseases and prevention. TCM performs diagnosis according to the information obtained from four diagnostic processes: that is, looking, listening and smelling, asking, and touching [15]. For thousands of years, Chinese medical practitioners have diagnosed the health status of patients' internal organs by inspecting the patterns of tongues.…”

“…The changes of the tongue can objectively reflect the status of a disease, since the tongue shows a relationship with viscera. Then, it helps to differentiate syndromes, give proper treatment and herbs, and determine the prognosis of a disease [15]. Many foreign researchers are interested in the tongue diagnosis of TCM and have proposed many research methods to achieve an objective, standard, and intelligent tongue diagnosis.…”

“…Kanawong et al categorized tongue images and linked the cold or hot ZHENG (TCM syndrome) of tongue images with gastritis [15]. ZHENG in TCM, which is used to classify TCM disease, is the assemblage of disease symptoms and also the theoretical abstraction of the symptom profiles of individual patients [15].…”

“…The Shanghai Declaration on promoting health in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development put forward China's declaration on the sustainable development of health: "Consider the growing importance and value of traditional medicine, which could contribute to improved health outcomes, including those in the sustainable development goals (SDGs) [23]" We improve the machine learning algorithm based on [15] and design the app iTongue as an engagement method, referring to the concept of healthcare in TCM to offer simple and easy access to health management. We chose the typical diagnostic process "look" in TCM to reflect users' health conditions by taking pictures of tongues.…”