Neural Network to Offer a Likely Diagnosis Using Digital Analysis of Patient's Tongue Image

The human tongue can help the physician offer a diagnosis even though it may betray signs of illness, which combined with other symptoms such as a cough, fever, presence of jaundice, headache or bowel habits. For people in remote areas who do not have ready access to a physician, a new diagnostic system is reported in the International Journal of Bio-medical Engineering and Technology that works to combine the soft inputs of described symptoms with a digital analysis of an image of the patient's tongue.

Karthik Ramamurthy of the Department of Information Technology, Rajalakshmi Engineering College, in Chennai, India, and colleagues, have trained a neural network that can take soft inputs such as standard questions about symptoms and a digitized image of the patient's tongue and offer a likely diagnosis so that professional healthcare might then be sought if needed. The digitized images of the patient's tongue reveal discoloration, engorgement, texture and other factors that might be linked to illness.