Abstract
In order to improve the quality and consistency of tongue images acquired by current imaging devices, this research aims to develop a novel imaging system which can faithfully and precisely record human tongue information for medical analysis. A thorough demand analysis is first conducted in this chapter in order to summarize requirements for rendering all possible medical clues, i.e., color, texture, and geometric features. Then a series of system design criteria are illustrated, and following from them three hardware modules of the imaging system, including the illuminant, lighting path, and imaging camera, are optimally proposed. Moreover, one built-in software module, the color correction process, is also provided to compensate for color variations caused by system components. Finally, several important performance indicators, including illumination uniformity , system reproducibility, and accuracy, were tested. Experimental results showed that captured images were of high quality and remained stable when acquisitions are repeated. The largest color difference between the images acquired at different times was 1.6532, which is hardly distinguishable by human observation. Compared to existing devices, the proposed system could provide a much more accurate and stable solution for tongue image acquisition. Furthermore, this developed imaging system has been evaluated by doctors of Traditional Chinese Medicine for almost 3 years and over 9000 tongue images have been collected. Analysis results based on these data also validate the effectiveness of the proposed system.
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Zhang, D., Zhang, H., Zhang, B. (2017). Tongue Images Acquisition System Design. In: Tongue Image Analysis. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2167-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2167-1_2
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