How does it work?
The computer algorithm can detect diseases just by looking at your tongue.
“Typically, people with diabetes have a yellow tongue; cancer patients a purple tongue with a thick greasy coating; and acute stroke patients present with an unusually shaped red tongue,” senior study author Ali Al-Naji, who teaches at Middle Technical University in Baghdad and the University of South Australia told NewYork Post.The study is published in the journal Technologies.
“Key features of this evaluation include the color of the tongue, shade of the coating, form of the tongue, depth of the coating, oral moisture, tongue crevices, contusions, red spots, and tooth impressions,” the researchers have said.
Among these, tongue color is of the most importance, they have said and have added that a healthy tongue usually shows a pink color and a slender white film.
The AI model is replicating a 2,000-year-old technique from traditional Chinese medicine, according to which :
- Yellow coating on the tongue means diabetes mellitus; in some cases it can also be blue with a yellow coating.
- Purple tongue with a thick fatty layer can be cancer
- Unusually shaped red tongue can be acute stroke
- A white tongue may indicate chill syndrome or a lack of iron in the blood
- Yellow tongue signifies a condition of increased body heat, hepatic and biliary organ disease
- Indigo or violet tongue can be due to vascular or gastrointestinal issues
- Appendicitis can lead to changes in the exterior of the tongue
- Depending on the intensity of bacterial or viral COVID-19, the tongue can be faint pink in mild cases, crimson in moderate infections, and deep red (burgundy) in serious cases
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“In this study, a webcam was employed to capture images of the tongue in real time using MATLAB GUI software. The proposed system was tested using 60 images of both patients and healthy individuals captured in real time with a diagnostic accuracy rate reaching 96.6%,” the researchers have said.