Figure 5.

Representative tongue images from the Yin-deficient and control groups. A tongue coating percentage was used as an index to estimate the amount of tongue coating. The redness of the tongue was measured as the mean a^∗ value of both the whole tongue area and the tongue body area that remained after excluding the tongue coating area. (a) A tongue image of a Yin-deficient patient is shown, and (b) a tongue image from a nondeficient control patient is shown. Note that these examples show that the tongue coating percentage of the Yin-deficient patient is lower and that the mean a^∗ value of the whole tongue area is higher than those of the nondeficient patient. The mean a^∗ value of the tongue body area showed a relatively small difference between the two samples.