The color of your tongue is a sign of whats going on and the color makes a difference.
New Diagnostic System Based on Tongue Color Analysis Correctly Diagnoses Diseases in 94% of Cases
Oct 24, 2023 by News Staff
Tongue diagnostic systems are fast gaining traction due to an increase in remote health monitoring worldwide, and new research from the University of South Australia and Iraq’s Middle Technical University provides more evidence of the increasing accuracy of this technology to detect disease.
The tongue color is a mirror that reflects the health status of a patient. It could be used in diagnosing some diseases without any physical contact with the patient, which facilitates the process of primary healthcare. Image credit: Gerd Altmann / Sci.News.
Thousands of years ago, Chinese medicine pioneered the practice of examining the tongue to detect illness,” said Dr. Ali Al-Naji, a researcher at the University of South Australia and Middle Technical University. “Conventional medicine has long endorsed this method, demonstrating that the color, shape, and thickness of the tongue can reveal signs of diabetes, liver issues, circulatory and digestive problems, as well as blood and heart diseases.” “Taking this a step further, new methods for diagnosing disease from the tongue’s appearance are now being done remotely using artificial intelligence and a camera — even a smartphone.” “Computerised tongue analysis is highly accurate and could help diagnose diseases remotely in a safe, effective, easy, painless, and cost-effective way.” “This is especially relevant in the wake of a global pandemic like COVID-19, where access to health centres can be compromised.”
Diabetes patients typically have a yellow tongue,
cancer patients a purple tongue with a thick greasy coating,
and acute stroke patients present with a red tongue that is often crooked.
A 2022 study in Ukraine analyzing tongue images of 135 COVID-19 patients via a smartphone showed that 64% of patients with a mild infection had a pale pink tongue, 62% of patients with a moderate infection had a red tongue, and 99% of patients with a severe COVID-19 infection had a dark red tongue. Previous studies using tongue diagnostic systems have accurately diagnosed appendicitis, diabetes, and thyroid disease. In their study, Dr. Al-Naji and colleagues reviewed the worldwide advances in computer-aided disease diagnosis, based on tongue color. They also used a USB web camera and computer to capture tongue images from 50 patients with diabetes, renal failure and anemia, comparing colors with a data base of 9,000 tongue images. Using image processing techniques, they correctly diagnosed the diseases in 94% of cases, compared to laboratory results. “It is possible to diagnose with 80% accuracy more than 10 diseases that cause a visible change in tongue color,” Dr. Al-Naji said.
“In our study, we achieved a 94% accuracy with three diseases, so the potential is there to fine tune this research even further.”
The team’s paper appears in the AIP Conference Proceedings.
Abdulghafor Khudhaer Abdullah et al. 2023. Computer-aided diseases diagnosis system based on tongue color analysis: A review. AIP Conf. Proc 2804 (1): 040003; doi: 10.1063/5.0154231 https://www.sci.news/medicine/tongue-co ... 12385.html