Objective Analysis of Face Feature and Expression in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Inspection, auscultation and olfaction, inquiring, palpation, called si-zhen in Chinese, are four diagnostic methods in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) which reflect a general identification to the variation of human body done by subjective thinking. Face diagnosis is one of the most precious and widely used diagnostic methods in inspection, but with a great deal of subjective information and experiential knowledge of medical physicians in the past. In order to meet the requirement of face diagnosis objectivity, combining with TCM theory and Chinese medical physicians´ clinical experience, the framework of assistant face diagnosis is designed, and several methods are proposed to do the objective analysis of face feature and expression, including facial zang-fu respective localization, complexion extraction and classification, complexion transfer and eye expression analysis and eye-sight brightness computing, making use of biometric technology and computer image processing. Experimental results show that these methods are effective and have practical significant for assisting Chinese medical physicians to analyze diagnostic information objectively, as well as a theoretical and methodological support for the quantification, analysis and processing on the face diagnostic information in TCM.