title: Availability of tongue diagnosis system for assessing tongue coating thickness in patients with functional dyspepsia.
abstract: Tongue diagnosis is an important procedure in traditional Korean medicine (TKM). In particular, tongue coating thickness (TCT) is deemed to show the progression of the disease. However, conventional tongue diagnosis has limitations because of various external factors. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the availability of tongue diagnosis system (TDS) in the assessment of TCT. This study has been designed as a prospective clinical trial involving 60 patients with functional dyspepsia. Tongue images will be obtained by TDS twice with a 30 min interval. The system will measure the percentage of TCT and classify it as either no coating, thin coating, or thick coating according to the existing diagnostic criteria. After finishing the collection of 60 patients' tongue images, TCT on the images will be simultaneously evaluated by the conventional method to establish the gold standard for assessing TCT by 5 well-trained clinicians. The evaluation will be repeated by the same clinicians after 2 weeks, but the order of the images will be changed. This trial is expected to provide clinical evidence for the availability of TDS as a diagnostic tool and to contribute to the standardization of the diagnosis system used in TKM. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01864837.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Korean Medicine, Graduate School, Kyung Hee University, Seoul 130-701, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Juyeon
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Jiyoung
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Son
authors.forename: Seungwon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jang
authors.forename: Dong-Hyun
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Nam
authors.forename: Gajin
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Inkwon
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Yeo
authors.forename: Seok-Jae
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Ko
authors.forename: Jae-Woo
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Bongha
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Ryu
authors.forename: Jinsung
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim