2012 International Conference on Computer Science and Electronics Engineering
A Prior Knowledge-based Algorithm for Tongue Body Segmentation
Chao Liang
College of Computer Science and Engineering
Changchun University of Technology
Changchun, China
liangchao@mail.ccut.edu.cn
Abstract—Because tongue image segmentation is an important
procedure in the tongue characterization, its accuracy affects
the following automatic process directly. In this paper, we
propose a new tongue segmentation approach based on the
combination a feature of tongue shape and the Snakes
Correction model. We firstly get a rough tongue contour
through using the features of tongue image in HIS color model,
then correct a preliminary tongue contour with the feature of
tongue shape, and apply this result to the Snake model for final
result. The experimental results indicate that the approach is
efficiently segmented tongue image.
Keywords-Tongue segmentation; Tongue shape feature;
Snake model;
I. INTRODUCTION
Tongue diagnosis is one of the most widely used
diagnostic methods in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
Through the observation of tongue, the doctors can
understand the body's physiological and pathological
changes and get a patient physical condition. Traditional
tongue diagnosis mainly depends on the doctor's experience
and knowledge, this can't cause the diagnosis of subjectivity
and difficult to repeatability, and can't scientifically and
objective retained experience of tongue diagnosis. Therefore,
the characterization researches on TCM tongue diagnosis is
very important to establish a tongue features quantitative
system based on digital image processing. In recent years,
the Traditional Chinese Medicine [1] Tongue Characterization
Research has attracted universal attention. The existing
research result has shown image analysis technology in the
characterization of tongue diagnosis is feasible, and also
made some achievements [2]. But there are also some defects,
need to make further study on the new method in order to
obtain the better diagnosis.
In order to further analyze tongue image, the important
premise is to accurately segment tongue from original tongue
image. Due to these tongue images are complex, including
lips, face and teeth, however, the traditional low-level image
processing techniques, such as regional growth, general edge
detection, fail to segment the tongue out of its surroundings.
Kass proposed parametric active contour model in 1988, also
namely the Snakes model [3]. It detect image edge by
minimize the energy function of spline near the region of
interest, and combine feature extraction with feature
description.
978-0-7695-4647-6/12 $26.00 © 2012 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCSEE.2012.11
Dongcheng Shi
College of Computer Science and Engineering
Changchun University of Technology
Changchun, China
dcshi@mail.ccut.edu.cn
In this paper, firstly, we apply some features of tongue
image in HIS color space to extract the edge of tongue base,
and then get the edge of tongue with tongue prior knowledge
[4]
. Finally, we apply the result to the Snake model for tongue
contour.
II. THE SEGMENTATION ALGORITHM FOR TONGUE BODY
A. The Existent Problems and Solutions
In computer vision field, image segmentation is still a
problem. If only uses the image information to segment
image precisely is very difficult, even is impossible. The
accuracy requirement of tongue segmentation is very high, if
the segmentation results are not accurate, it will directly
affect the next diagnosis [5]. In order to segment accurately
image, we combine usually prior knowledge with image
information. In the last of the tongue body segmentation, the
result only is one profile, so it’s adapted to segment tongue
body.
But a number of experiments show that only utilizing the
Snake method can't get the ideal tongue body outline.
Tongues differ in thousands ways, tongue body color is rich
and above shapes. When we will design the segmentation
algorithm, according to the characteristics of the tongue
body, using prior knowledge to remove feasible part of
man’s face, and then find the approximate location and edge
of tongue body, finally get accurate edge in Snake method.
After a lot of experimental research and analysis, we do
the following improvement based on the Snake Model:
1) No matter in color or in texture, the lips and tongue
body have similarities, so they are difficult to segment in
Snake model. For this, we will switch tongue image to HSI
color space, and research the features of dark region
between the upper lip and the base of tongue in S, determine
the edge of the base of tongue. Use the edge of the base of
tongue to determine the initial tongue body edge with
tongue body H component properties.
2) The initial value of Snake model have a great
influence on segmentation result, such as when the initial
values are far away from the tongue body edge, the
algorithm will not converge to a tongue body edge through
Iteration. Therefore, in this paper, we use the shape of the
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tongue body prior knowledge to correct the preliminary binary image, so as to slowly remove these discrete noise
tongue body outline. points, shown in Fig.2.
3) Adjust the parameters of energy of Snake model, then
use the parameters to get relatively continuous smooth
tongue body contour.
B. Extract The Preliminary Edge of Tongue Body
HSI color mode represents color s similarly how the
human eye senses colors. The human eye can easily
distinguish the tongue body and face background region, so
choose HSI color model to segment tongue body and
background region. We can find the approximate region of
tongue pixel with the features of the Hue component of
tongue image, but the region may include part of the chin
and lip, etc, obviously this is not the desired result.
Fig.1 shows a typical real tongue image. The Original Figure 2. H &S
image was converted to HSI space firstly, and get it's hue
component, as shown in figure 1 (c). Then it was segmented We segment the Hue component of tongue image, shown
by threshold value of hue component to segment tongue in Fig1(c), in image segmentation algorithm, so the rough
body area out of face and mouth areas. edge of tongue should be acquired from Hue component of
the tongue image, shown in Fig.3.

(a) Original image (b) HIS image

Figure 3. Hue component segmentation

The lower edge of the dark area is the edge of the tongue
base, thus we can get the accurate edge information of the
tongue base through the dark area, shown in Fig.4.

(c) Hue component (d) saturation component

Figure 1. HIS color model transformation

We could see a piece of the dark areas between the up lip

and the tongue body from Fig.1 (a). The dark area in
saturation component is very obvious in Fig.1 (d), it’s easy to
detect the dark region location and use the region to get the
edge of the root of tongue.
The hue and saturation components of the original tongue Figure 4. H&S segmentation
image being operated by a logical AND-operation, extract
the dark area between the up lip and the tongue, then use the Finally, fuse the rough edge of the tongue base with the
Morphological Close filter to morphologically close the edge of the tongue for the final result, shown in Fig.5. We
can find the contour of the tongue is not continuous and not

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inaccurate. In order to correct the contour, it is necessary to 2) Judge whether the value of diff greater than threshold.
introduce a shape correction model. If diff < threshold, go step 4, else go step 3.
3) Calculate new diff again according to euqation (3),
and repeat step 2,until diff<threshold so far.

diff = MN cos β (3)

4) Implement euqation (4)ˈthen get the final result

OP ′ = OQ + diff (4)

Figure 5. The final result

C. Correct The Preliminary Edge with Tongue Shape

In some cases, the hue component of face and the hue
component of tongue are similar, so it’s difficult to get
continual contour only with the above method. After fusing
image, there may be some lack of tongue contour, shown in
Fig.2 (b). It’s obvious to take some strategy to correct the
contour. If we don’t take certain strategy, the segmented
result will contain other parts besides the tongue. Due to the
Snake model is sensitive to initial position, so it’s important
to correct the result. In this paper, this tongue shape
correction model is proposed based on bi-elliptical tongue
template presented by Bo Pang et al [6]. Figure 6. shaope correction model
The proposed shape correction model is proposed based
on the features of tongue shape [7]. Firstly, we should get the We can use this algorithm to correct the rough tongue
accurate edge of tongue base through the front steps, and contour, shown in Fig2, to get relatively continuous closed
choose the O point as center point, shown in Fig.3. The contour line, and remove the isolated noise points.
contour of tongue should change continuously, and won't Through the above steps, we can get the corrected tongue
mutations, so we can set horizontal line through point O as shape, shown in Fig.4.
the reference axis of the tongue shape template. When given
a point Q, if you want to determine where the next point P is,
shown in Fig.3, it’s necessary to firstly know the lengths and
angles of OQ and OP , and the calculate the difference the
length of OQ and the length of OP .
The detailed steps of shape correction method are as
follow:
1) Firstly, calculate length of OP and OQ , and
substituted into equation (1), then calculate the difference of
the both according to equation (2). Figure 7. shaope correction result

OM = OQ cos α , ON = OP cos β (1) D. Dynamic contour model

A snake, introduced by Kass et al., is an elastic curve,
which from an initial state tries to adjust to the most
significant features of the scene. It is deformed due to
diff = MN = OM − ON (2) external forces that attract it towards salient features of the
image, and internal forces which try to preserve the condition
of smoothness in the shape of the curve. A final solution is

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given by the minimum total energy of the snake, which is the
result of the equation.
n robustness, in MATLAB development platform to the
E Snake = ¦ ( E int ernal (v( s )) + E external (v ( s ))) (5)
s =1
Where v(s) =[x(s), y(s)], s=0, …, N-1 is the curve of
control point of the snake, s is the parameter of the curve,
and N is the number of control points.
Einternal(v(s)) is the internal energy of the snake. The
internal energy is given by the membrane energy sum, which
expresses the stretching of the snake, and by the planar
deformation energy, that expresses the bending of the snake:
2 2
Eint ernal (v( S )) = α ( s ) v ' ( s ) + β ( s ) v( s ) '' (6)
v’(s) and v’’(s) indicate the first and second derivatives,
respectively. The elasticity parameters¢and £ control the
smoothness of the curve.
Eexternal(v(s)) is the external energy of the snake. It
consists of image energy function or other external
constraints produced the energy function of composition.
E external (v( s )) = γ ( s ) Eimage (v( s )) + E constrain (v( s ))
(7)
The external energy pushes the snake towards the
features of the image.
Through the above steps got the contour of the tongue
body area point. Fig. 5 shows the segmentation results of
applying improved algorithm to segment the tongue image.
Figure 8. the final segmentation result
III. RESULTS
In order to verify the accuracy of the algorithm and the
description of the algorithm and the tongue image of
different as the segmentation. At the same time, we compare
the performance of the approach in this paper with that of
Snakes for a large number of tongue images. In most cases, a
tongue is reflection symmetrical, but a deflective tongue will
not appear so in an image and must be corrected before being
processed [2]. In this paper, we don’t consider how to solve
this problem. But the experiment result show the approach in
this paper is better to correct the tongue contour for regular
tongue shape.
The approach in this paper has succeeded in conditions of
regular tongue shape, but the accuracy of the approach is not
high. So it is necessary to further research the shape
correction model.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we develop a new tongue contour approach,
for automated tongue edge extraction in TCM. Based on the
combination of both tongue shape and Snake model, our
proposed approach can overcome irregular change of tongue
contour problems since a prior knowledge of tongue shape is
introduced into the shape repair formulation to repair the
Preliminary edge of tongue body. Experimental results on
real tongue images demonstrate that our new approach
achieved good image segmentation effect.
REFERENCES
[1] Mingyingy Wang et al., “An Improved Snakes Model for Tongue
Image Segmentation”, Measurement and control technology,
vol.30, pp.32-35, 2011
[2] Bo Huang, Jinsong Wu, David Zhang, “Tongue shape
classification by geometric features”, Information Sciences 180
(2010) 312-324.
[3] Kass M, Witkin A, Terzopoulos D. “Snakes:active contour
models”, International Journal of Computer Vision, 1988,
1(4):321-331.
[4] Qingyan Wang et al., “A Knowledge-Based Arithmetic for
Automatic Tongue Segmentation”, Acta Electronica Sinica, vol.32,
pp.489-491, Mar. 2004.
[5] B. Pang, D. Zhang, K. Wang, Tongue image analysis for
appendicitis diagnosis, Information Science 175 (2005) 160̢176.
[6] Bo. Pang,Kuanquan Wang, “On Automated Tongue Image
Segmen-tation in Chinese Medicine,” ICPR 2002, vol.1, pp. 616-
619, August 2002.
[7] Dasheng Yang et.al, “Effective Algorithm on Automatic
Segmentation of Body of Tongue”, Application Research of
Computesr,vol.2, pp.170-172, 2007.

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