Satoshi Yamamoto Norimichi Tsumura Toshiya Nakaguchi
Takao Namiki Yuji Kasahara Keiko Ogawa-Ochiai
Katsutoshi Terasawa Yoichi Miyake
Chiba University, ,Japan
International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery 2011 Mar;
6(2): 209-215.
Abstract
Purpose Kampo medicine (Japanese traditionalherbal medicine) contains concepts
useful forpreventive medicine. For example, Mibyou (diseaseorientedstate)
aims to prevent illness by early recognition.Kampo diagnosis is based on
subjective examinations, such as tongue inspection, by trained specialistphysicians.
An objective metric of the tongue colorspectrum was developed as a surrogate
for subjectivevisual inspection
Methods Tongue images were acquired with a hyperspectralimaging system,
and the uncoated tongueregion was segmented automatically. The spectral
informationof the uncoated tongue area was analyzed byprincipal component
analysis (PCA). The componentvector most representative of each clinical
symptom was found by rotating the vector on a plane spanned by two arbitrary
principal component vectors.Results The system was tested in human volunteers.
Results The system was tested in human volunteers.Forty-four hyperspectral
images were acquired from 30healthy male subjects for initial testing.The
Oketsu(blood stagnation) score was determined by an experiencedclinician
in Kampo medicine from 27 of 30 subjects. The correlation between respective
principal components and Oketsu score was 0.67 at maximum, and increased
to 0.73 by linear combination, while it was0.75 by vector rotation. Significant
correlations for many disorders were demonstrated, and vector rotation
showed better correlation than linear combination.Conclusions A PCA-based
algorithm was developed to objectively evaluate patients using color images
of the tongue surface. Testing showed that this method was a feasible
surrogate for expert visual tongue analysis.
This tool should help non-trained people identify Mibyou health status
for individuals. The algorithm is free of empirical criteria, and it may
be it applicable tomany hyperspectral image types.
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