Tongue Diagnosis in Chronic Kidney Disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a global financial and medical burden, because its high morbidity and mortality. Tongue diagnosis is an important diagnostic tool in traditional Chinese medicine. However, tongue diagnosis often biased by subjective judgements and environmental factors. The automatic tongue diagnosis system can noninvasively capture tongue images, automatically correct any lighting and color deviation and analyze tongue manifestations.

This protocol is a cross-sectional, case-controlled observational study investigating the tongue features of non-dialysis CKD and end-stage renal disease patients by using the noninvasive ATDS. CKD patients who meets inclusion and exclusion criteria will be enrolled. Participants will be divided into 3 groups according to their renal function and accept dialysis or not, including a non-dialysis CKD group, end stage renal disease (ESRD) group and control group. Tongue images will be captured and 9 tongue features including tongue shape, tongue color, fur thickness, fur color, saliva, tongue fissure, ecchymosis, tooth mark, and red dots will be extracted and analyzed by ATDS.

This protocol aims to apply noninvasive ATDS to analyze tongue features of CKD patients.

Inclusion criteria

The patients will be included if they meet the following criteria:

• age over 20 years old
• The person who volunteered to participate this research and signed the agreement of institutional review board.

Exclusion criteria

• Pregnant women
• Patients with acute infection
• The person who has cancer with brain metastasis and present with cognitive dysfunction such as dementia or delirium
• unable to protrude the tongue stably
• Patients with risk of temporomandibular joint dislocation
• Those who did not sign the agreement of institutional review board