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On January 11, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released the international standard ISO20498-5 for the acquisition and representation methods of tongue color and coating color in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) tongue diagnosis. This standard was led by Professor Wang Yiqin’s team from the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s Key Laboratory of Health Identification and Assessment.
There are many TCM tongue diagnosis instruments in the international market, each with different computer tongue image analysis methods. To standardize the common methods for the objective acquisition and representation of tongue color and coating color in computer tongue image analysis systems within the TCM industry, Wang Yiqin submitted a proposal for the standardization of TCM tongue color acquisition and representation methods to ISO/TC249 in 2015. After discussions, the proposal was approved for project initiation by committee vote in 2016. The standard was developed over a period of 30 months, with nominated experts from five countries, including China, Australia, Canada, Thailand, and the Czech Republic, participating in the project team to jointly formulate the standard.
The released ISO20498-5 provides a standardized method for the digital representation of tongue image colors. This method objectively represents the color attributes of tongue color and coating color, independent of clinical diagnostic results and not limited by the collection equipment, thus solving the problem of data interoperability.
Editor: Wang Di
China Traditional Medicine
WeChat ID: satcm01
