Application of hyperspectral imaging system in tongue analysis of traditional Chinese medicine

Tongue diagnosis is an important diagnostic method in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). However, one important problem in tongue diagnosis is that its practice is subjective, qualitative and difficult in automated diagnosis. Recently it is a trend to utilize the image processing and pattern recognition technology in aid of the quantitative analysis of tongue image. As the tongue image is often acquired by a commercial digital camera, the pathological information that the image can provide is very limited. In this study, a hyperspectral imaging system, instead of a digital camera was used to acquire the image of the patient's tongue. Experimental results demonstrate that the hyperspectral tongue image acquired by the hyperspectral imaging system has more pathological information of the tongue. It is a new approach for tongue inspection of TCM.