Objective: To design a face gloss classification model and to provide an automatic and quantitative approach for the diagnosis of Chinese medicine (CM) based on the face images.
Methods: To classify the face gloss images into two groups (gloss and non-gloss), feature extraction methods were applied to the original images. The original images were supposed to obtain a more ideal representation in which gloss information was better revealed in four color spaces [including red, green, blue (RGB), hue, saturation, value (HSV), Gray and Lab]. Principal component analysis (PCA), 2-dimensional PCA (2DPCA), 2-directional 2-dimensional PCA [(2D)2PCA], linear discriminant analysis (LDA), 2-dimensional LDA (2DLDA), and partial least squares (PLS) were used as the feature extraction methods of face gloss. k nearest neighbor was used as the classifification method.
Results: All the six feature extraction methods were useful in extracting information of face gloss, especially LDA, which had the best prediction accuracy in the 4 color spaces. The average accuracy of LDA in the Lab was 7%-10% higher than that of PCA, 2DPCA, (2D)2PCA and 2DLDA P<0.05). The prediction accuracy of LDA reached 98% in the Lab color space and showed practical usage in clinical diagnosis. The consistent rate between the CM experts and the facial diagnosis system was 81%.
Conclusion: A computer-assisted classifification model was designed to provide an automatic and quantitative approach for the gloss diagnosis of CM based on the face images.
Keywords: Chinese medicine; computer-assisted face gloss diagnosis; feature extraction; image processing.