Of the four basic medical diagnoses in Chinese medicine, tongue examinations rank in importance with pulse examinations. The conventional method of clinically recording the color of the tongue by taking photographs with film cameras generally presents various problems, such as the difficulty of establishing objective procedures and the long-term storage of records.
The authors accordingly attempted to enhance the objectivity of tongue examinations by devising a new image correction procedure combining the use of color-and-size-matching stickers (image correction color charts) and computers utilizing a digital camera. As a result, the images that are output after correction not only reproduce the tongue in its actual size but also make it possible to approximate color system values measured from the actual tongue, thereby suggesting the possibility of a useful procedure for making objective evaluations in tongue examinations.

We performed a prospective study to determine whether the walking pattern of children with flatfoot can be influenced by using shoes and custom-modeled insoles. One hundred and thirty-two children (mean age ; 4.20±2.53) who had been referred by a physiatrist, and who were diagnosed with flatfoot at the brace clinic in our institute, were assigned to three groups : The first group was asked to walk barefoot, the second one to walk with shoes without insoles and the last one to walk with shoes with insoles. We measured walking speed, cadence, step length, step width, the duration of right and left stance phases, both double-limb stance phases, both swing phases, walking angle, and toe angle using a 2.4 m sheet-type Gait Analyzer, the Walk Way MW-1000 ^TM, at the individual's self-selected speed. Compared with the barefoot group, a significant increase was observed in the group using shoes with custom-modeled insoles in both walking speed and step length on both sides, and there were reductions in swing phase and walking angle on both sides (paired t-test ; p<0.002).