Everyone has had a doctor ask them to stick out their tongue. It is often one of the first parts of a physical examination. Now, a new diagnostic system based on an image of a person's tongue can help people in remote areas with no ready access to doctors make an accurate diagnosis.
Doctors are trained to look at a person's tongue and judge the color, texture, and other factors. This information, along with other symptoms, such as a cough, fever, headache, swollen glands, or bowel problems, helps a physician make his or her diagnosis. Other factors they look at on your tongue include the presence of swelling, patchy coatings, sores, or dryness.
This new image-based diagnostic system was developed at Rajalakshmi Engineering College in Chennai, India. The system evaluates a digitized image of the patient's tongue, along with the answers to several questions about symptoms, and then offers a likely diagnosis. Then, if the situation warrants it, a healthcare professional can be contacted.
For example, a very smooth tongue might be a sign of a deficiency in vitamin B12, iron, or folate. It can also be a symptom of anemia. If the tongue has turned black, a fungal overgrowth may be present that could indicate overuse of certain antibiotics or an HIV infection. Deep furrows in the tongue can signify a syphilis infection. Sores on the tongue are associated with Crohn's disease, colitis, and other conditions of the bowel.
The diagnostic system uses the condition of the tongue in combination with other symptoms to identify whether a patient has any of several illnesses: the common cold, flu, bronchitis, streptococcal throat infections, sinusitis, allergies, asthma, pulmonary edema, food poisoning, and diverticulitis.
Currently, the system can diagnosis fourteen different conditions, but the Rajalakshmi team says that they will be able to add evaluations of images of the patient's eyes as an additional source of health information and be able to make more diagnoses.
The diagnostic system was discussed in an article in the International Journal of Biomedical Science and reported at ScienceDaily.com.
