There's new meaning to the old medical instruction to "stick out your tongue and say aaah."
A computer algorithm developed by Iraqi and Australian researchers can diagnose diabetes, stroke, anemia, COVID-19, and a wide range of vascular and gastrointestinal issues with remarkable accuracy by observing the color of your tongue.
The breakthrough technique proved accurate in 98% of cases observed. According to ScienceDaily, the artificial intelligence (AI) model was trained using 5,260 images to detect diseases.
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Scientists from Middle Technical University (MTU) in Baghdad, Iraq and the University of South Australia (UniSA), developed the breakthrough technique that provides a highly accurate on-the-spot diagnosis, confirming the value of AI in medicine.
The new research published in Technologies is the modern version of a 2,000-year-old practice used in Chinese medicine that advocates examining the tongue for signs of disease.
"The color, shape and thickness of the tongue can reveal a litany of diseases," said senior author Ali Al-Naji of UniSA. "Typically, people with diabetes have a yellow tongue; cancer patients a purple tongue with a thick greasy coating; and acute stroke patients present with an unusually shaped red tongue."
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The professor added that a white tongue can indicate anemia; people with COVID-19 are likely to have a deep red tongue.
For the study, a laptop equipped with a webcam was placed nearly eight inches from a patient's tongue. An imaging system was able to determine the disease based on the photos in almost all cases, the New York Post reported.
"These results confirm that computerized tongue analysis is a secure, efficient, user-friendly and affordable method for disease screening that backs up modern methods with a centuries-old practice," noted study co-author Javaan Chahl, of UniSA. Chahl predicted that smartphones eventually will be able to diagnose diseases using this unique AI technology.