Proceedings Article | 22 October 2010
Proc. SPIE. 7658, 5th International Symposium on Advanced Optical Manufacturing and Testing Technologies: Optoelectronic Materials and Devices for Detector, Imager, Display, and Energy Conversion Technology
KEYWORDS: Light sources, Spectrum analysis, Image processing, Coating, Lamps, Computing systems, Tongue, Data acquisition, Signal processing, Charge-coupled devices
The tongue coating diagnosis is an important part in tongue diagnosis of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).The change
of the thickness and color of the tongue coating can reflect the pathological state for the patient. By observing the tongue
coating, a Chinese doctor can determine the nature or severity of disease. Because some limitations existed in the tongue
diagnosis method of TCM and the method based on the digital image processing, a novel tongue coating analyzer(TCA)
based on the concave grating monochrometer and virtual instrument is developed in this paper. This analyzer consists of
the light source system, check cavity, optical fiber probe, concave grating monochrometer, spectrum detector system
based on CCD and data acquisition (DAQ) card, signal processing circuit system, computer and data analysis software
based on LabVIEW, etc. Experimental results show that the novel TCA's spectral range can reach 300-1000 nm, its
wavelength resolution can reach 1nm, and this TCA uses the back-split-light technology and multi-channel parallel
analysis. Compared with the TCA based on the image processing technology, this TCA has many advantages, such as,
compact volume, simpler algorithm, faster processing speed, higher accuracy, cheaper cost and real-time handle data and
display the result, etc. Therefore, it has the greatly potential values in the fields of the tongue coating diagnosis for TCM.
