An Experience of Inheriting and Innovating Traditional Chinese

Medicine

;

by Artificial Intelligence

Bo Zhang

and Lina Meng

Qingyang City Hospital of Chinese Medicine, Anorectal Department 2, Qingyang, Gansu, China

Qingyang City Hospital of Chinese Medicine, Bone Fracturel Department 1, Qingyang, Gansu, China

Keywords: AI, TCM, Inheriting and Innovating.

Abstract: In recent years, the Chinese government attaches great importance to the evolution of traditional Chinese

medicine(shorted for TCM)

;

, put forward the significant deployment of the national strategy of traditional

Chinese medicine, has made many significant policies to facilitate the healthy evolution of traditional Chinese

medicine. However, there are still many problems in the evolution of traditional Chinese medicine

;

, and it is

urgent to use modern information technology and scientific and technological means to inherit and innovative,

and promote the modernization and international evolution of TCM

;

. Artificial intelligence (shorted for AI)is

one of the three cutting-edge technologies in the 21st century. It has been widely used in many fields and

yielded fruitful results, providing technical support and historical opportunities for the evolution of TCM. AI

has been widely used in TCM

;

instruments, intelligent auxiliary systems, TCM prescriptions, Acupoints

compatibility, and "four diagnoses", etc., and has gained rich practical experience. To facilitate the evolution

of TCM

;

, it is necessary to comprehensively collect, deeply excavate and utilize big data information of TCM,

further strengthen the integration of AI diagnosis and cure, persist in inheriting innovation and highlighting

characteristics, and facilitate the evolution and practical application of TCM

;

theories.

1 INTRODUCTION

As Chinese unique health resources, economic

resources with great potential, scientific and

technological resources with original advantages,

brilliant

; cultural resources and significant ecological

resources, TCM acts a significant role in economic

and social evolution. As one of the countries with the

most serious aging in the world, Chinese aging has

brought about digestive diseases, cardiovascular and

cerebrovascular diseases, neurological diseases,

respiratory diseases and other common diseases of

the elderly, which have facilitated the people's urgent

need for TCM health services. How to inherit,

innovate, revitalize and develop TCM science, and

make it act a more active role in deepening the reform

of the medical and health system and bringing

benefits to human health is a major historical mission

of theoretical researchers and practitioners of TCM.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0821-2361

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3342-0250

In recent years, the Chinese government payed

high attention to

; the evolution of TCM, formulated

the law of Chinese medicine, the "healthy China

2030" planning outline ", " much starker choices and

graver consequences-in planning evolution of

Chinese medicine" and "strategic plan for evolution

of Chinese medicine (2016-2030)",

informationization, standardization and

internationalization have been deployed. The

proposal of the national strategy of TCM and its

remarkable efficacy in the prevention and cure of

common, frequent, chronic and stubborn disease and

major infectious diseases, especially the coVID-19

outbreak in early 2020, have made TCM more and

more widely recognized by the international

community. However, we must also admit that there

are many problems in TCM, such as lack of high-

level talents, low industry concentration, lack of

evolution momentum and innovation motivation,

many international constraints, limited international

Zhang, B. and Meng, L.

An Experience of Inheriting and Innovating Traditional Chinese Medicine by Artiﬁcial Intelligence.

DOI: 10.5220/0011234200003444

In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Artiﬁcial Intelligence and Healthcare (CAIH 2021), pages 181-186

ISBN: 978-989-758-594-4

181

competitiveness (Tian 2015). It is urgent to use

modern information technology and scientific and

technological means to keep innovation and facilitate

modernization and international evolution of TCM.

2 THE PRACTICAL

SIGNIFICANCE OF

UPGRADING TCM BY AI

AI is one of the three most advanced technologies in

the world since the 1970s, and also one of the three

most advanced technologies in the 21st century. As a

significant result of the new round of scientific and

technological and industrial revolution, AI has been

widely used in many disciplines and has yielded

fruitful results and successful experience. TCM, as

one of the quintessence of China, needs a lot of

knowledge accumulation and clinical experience.

The cure method is person-specific. The material plan

is one for one patient, one disease for one patient, the

same disease for different cure, and different diseases

for the same cure. The promotion of AI provides

technical support and historical opportunity for the

evolution of TCM. First, AI could help facilitate the

information-based evolution of TCM. For thousands

of years, Chinese medicine research has established

an extremely large and orderly map of Chinese

medicine knowledge, but how to further facilitate the

evolution of Chinese medicine through the mining of

data value is a significant topic. The emergence of the

Internet, especially the arrival of the era of big data,

provides a rare opportunity for the informatization of

Chinese and Western medicine. AI has a unique

advantage in exploring tacit knowledge of TCM. At

present, AI supported by big data has been widely

used in the medical field. Intelligent auxiliary

systems such as medical image, voice recognition,

patient care and disease diagnosis have been widely

facilitated and used in large and medium-sized

hospitals. However, in general, the extension of AI to

TCM research depth is not enough, the application

field is not wide enough, need to further in-depth

research and exploration and practice. Second, AI

could help promote the inheritance and evolution of

TCM. It can be said that TCM in the inheritance,

promotion and application, revitalization and

evolution of large pain points and difficulties. In

general, the inheritance of famous TCM mainly

depends on the inheritance of schools or clinical

practice. Such inheritance mode has a long cycle,

cannot be copied, and is difficult to popularize and

apply. AI can effectively solve these problems. It can

integrate the diagnosis and cure thought, syndrome

differentiation logic and prescription experience of

well-known old Chinese medicine doctors, form an

online learning and auxiliary diagnosis and cure

system, improve the medical ability of general

doctors, improve the level of disease diagnosis and

cure in grassroots hospitals, and help the inheritance

and application of TCM. Third, AI culd help facilitate

the intellectualization of TCM diagnosis and cure.

Diagnosis and cure is the core of medicine. The

diagnostic process of TCM generally requires

information collection through observation, listening,

asking and cutting, differentiation of symptoms and

signs based on four diagnostic methods, and

formulation of prescription by the emperor and the

minister. The process is long, with a large amount of

information processing and strong dependence on

experience, which is not easy to inherit and learn.

However, with the use of AI, general physicians can

achieve standardized cure through information

collection and network, and provide scientific cure

plan by simulating the cure mode of differentiation of

symptoms and signs of famous doctor of Chinese

medicine through AI. Therefore, AI is a significant

tool to enlarge the productivity of TCM and a

significant starting point for the intelligent evolution

of TCM.

3 APPLICATION AND PRACTICE

OF AI IN CHINESE MEDICINE

AND PHARMACY

3.1 Application and Practice of AI in

Chinese Medicine Instruments

"Chinese medicine four diagnosis instrument" is a

great invention in the realm of AI, it is a blend of a

large number of advanced scientific and

technological achievements and numerous clinical

experience of TCM experts, can provide objective

TCM diagnosis information collection and analysis,

the combination of qualitative and quantitative health

status identification, health intervention adjustment

suggestion, efficacy evaluation of TCM, and slow

disease management covering different levels of the

medical and preventive health care system of

technical services, acts an extremely significant role

in realizing the transformation of TCM to modern

Chinese medicine. The principle of treating diseases

with Chinese medicine four diagnosis instrument

shows Figure 1. In recent years, foreign countries

attach great importance to the research and evolution

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and production of TCM four diagnostic instruments.

South Korea, Japan and other Asian countries have

invested a lot of human and material resources to

develop TCM and four-diagnostic instruments. South

Korea has successfully developed a portable tongue

instrument for health detection for families, invested

more in the evolution of four-diagnostic instruments

for Korean doctors, and Japan has successfully trial-

produced a pneumatic pulsar instrument for clinical

use. Our country also developed the remote medical

cure of TCM, mobile health, wisdom, health and

other new type of medical service mode, explore the

practice of internet extends the doctor's advice, the

electronic prescription of TCM health service such as

network, facilitate the internet technology cure and

waiting to remind online booking report query,

accurately capture to expend, diagnosis and cure,

drug delivery and convenient services, actively build

a collection of medical imaging, inspection report and

other health records in the integration of medical

information sharing service system, and gradually

establish a cross hospital of TCM health data sharing

interchange standard system.

Figure 1: the principle of treating diseases with Chinese medicine four diagnosis instrument

3.2 Application and Practice of AI in

Tongue Diagnosis

In terms of tongue image acquisition, in order to

avoid the influence of external light environment, a

spherical diffuse reflection black box was designed

(Shen 2007), in which light enters through the

opening of the integrating sphere box and diffuses

through the inner wall of the integrating sphere for

several times, so as to generate more uniform light on

the tongue body. Since the tongue image acquired is

greatly affected by the tongue posture, an automatic

acquisition system was designed to capture complete

tongue image information (Lv 2016). In the choice of

light source, the traditional tongue diagnosis requires

sufficient and soft natural light source, but due to the

season, time, weather and other reasons, the ideal

light source is always available. Therefore, the

International Lighting Commission proposed the

standard illumination body D65 to simulate the

typical sunlight, the standard light source D50 was

proposed (Shi 2004), suggested the use of green

lighting to improve the separation of tongue coating

and the recognition effect of point sting, and the use

of ring flash was proposed to improve the shooting

environment (Wu 2011).In the aspect of tongue

image preprocessing, because the illumination

environment under standard light source cannot be

completely simulated at present, different artificial

light sources are restricted by color temperature,

color rendering property, spectral continuity and

other factors, tongue image has color difference more

or less. Hardware correction requires manual white

balance according to the change of lighting

environment, while software correction is not only

accurate color restoration, but also more convenient

for clinical collection, which is conducive to practical

operation (Xu 2009). Median filtering could

effectively protect image edge information while

denoising, and it would be a better denoising method

in tongue image processing (Zhang 2017). Median

filtering was a smoothing method applicable to gray

images, which needed to convert tongue images into

gray images for processing, while mean shift rule

could be directly used to color images, with small

calculation amount and good processing effect. In

Core:Therapy

(Knowledge

optimize)

concrete content：

Liver resolve

depression

Regulating breath

Resolving phlegm

……

Core:Syndrome

(Information processing)

concrete content：

Liver-Qi Depression

Qi-depression

transforming into fire

Phlegm Depression

……

Core:Characterization

(Valid data)

concrete content：

Palpitations

Shortness of breath

chest

Distressanorexia

……

Core:ontology

(Display of true signs)

concrete content：

Breathing

Blood

Tongue

Liquid

……

TCM Data TCM Information TCM Knowledge TCM Wisdom

An Experience of Inheriting and Innovating Traditional Chinese Medicine by Artiﬁcial Intelligence

183

order to remove the face, lips, teeth and other parts of

the image (Lv 2016), the model of Snakes to split the

tongue was used (Wang 2003, Jain 1996, Qin 2010),

HIS space conversion of the image was proposed

(Zhao 1999), while other people proposed the

splitting and merging method (Wang 2005).

3.3 Application and Practice of AI in

Chinese Medicine Prescription

The prescriptions of traditional Chinese medicine on

the feasibility of constructing intelligent computing

model is analyzed(Ren 2012), the realization of key

technology points were summed up, on the basis of

set up intelligence technology platform, design the

strict treatment prescriptions of traditional Chinese

medicine model, determines the prescription data

source, data preprocessing, prescription treatment

prescriptions and data modeling test, the system

debugging and the result analysis and so on. The

framework of TCM prescription analysis system

based on the existing TCM prescription data

resources and TCM prescription analysis system was

proposed (Zhu 2014), which supported by

information methods and technologies such as

artificial intelligence data mining and centering on

TCM prescription data. An in-depth investigation of

the application of artificial intelligence senses such as

electronic tongue, electronic nose, electronic eye,

electronic ear and electronic skin in the field of TCM

was made (Liu 2016), and their applications of

qualitative and quantitative identification of TCM,

drug quality control, processing process evaluation

were widely introduced. The feasibility of horizontal

combination of artificial intelligence sensory multi-

technology and vertical combination of modern

analytical technology in pharmaceutical field was

analyzed.

3.4 Application and Practice of AI in

Acupoints Compatibility

A management system of TCM acupoints

compatibility was designed and developed (Liu

2016), and the law of TCM acupoints compatibility

through AI was revealed. Firstly, she analyzes the

existing database and completed the TCM

acupuncture points management system requirements

analysis, summarizes the primary insomnia and

gastroparesis two diseases of optimization, and

compatibility of the law to obtain the most suitable

for intelligent optimization algorithm of map

acupoints compatibility of the law, through the

acupoints compatibility of TCM management system

of gastroparesis and the simple processing of the data

of primary insomnia, provide accurate data for

Chinese medicine acupoints compatibility relation

graph. The apriori algorithm is used to generate

frequent item sets, support degree and confidence

degree of acupoints compatibility, forming

association rules. The apriori algorithm is further

optimized and the Apriori-GA algorithm model of

TCM acupoint compatibility management system is

established. Secondly, combining the practical

application of TCM acupoints compatibility

management system with the theoretical knowledge

of Apriori-GA algorithm, the software package was

written by MATLAB. Based on the data of

gastroparesis and primary insomnia in the TCM

acupoints compatibility management system,

association rules were generated and MCODE

algorithm was integrated to develop the TCM

acupoints compatibility relation map drawing system.

Finally, through continuous testing and improvement,

the system can draw the relationship map of TCM

acupoints compatibility.

3.5 Application and Practice of AI in

"Four Diagnoses"

Some people deeply studied the practice and practice

of advanced information technology in the "four

diagnosis" of TCM (Long 2019, Gao 2007, Tian

2010, Yan 2009). First, in the realm of biomedical

engineering, face recognition technology and iris

recognition technology are relatively mature. In the

future, they will be gradually used as scientific

research tools in the realm of TCM diagnostics, with

extensive application fields. The facial image

tracking model and skin color tracking model are

simple and effective. The eigenvector method is

effective in determining the size, position, distance,

Angle and other attributes of the facial contour of iris,

nasal wing, and muzzle Angle, analyzing the

corresponding geometric features, and distinguishing

the iris changes of various patients. Second, the

electronic stethoscope technology is an effective

assistant to the aural diagnosis of TCM. Through the

comparison and analysis with human olfaction and

chemical examination, the electronic nose technology

can realize the real-time control of olfaction well.

Thirdly, intelligent sensor technology can realize

digital medical diagnosis of TCM palpation and

obtain more accurate pulse diagnosis information.

Fourth, modern information technology is more

objective and comprehensive to patients' disease

status, evolution trend, past medical history, living

habits.

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4 SUGGESTIONS ON AI TO

FACILITATE THE EVOLUTION

OF CHINESE MEDICINE

4.1 Strengthening the Integration of AI

Diagnosis and Cure

AI is an essential tool to assist the research and

application of TCM. It has a broad prospect in the

realm of productivity expansion and TCM promotion.

To strengthen the combination of TCM and AI,

according to the characteristics of the evolution of

TCM, find the entry point for the combination of AI,

research and design more AI achievements in TCM

registration, diagnosis and cure, remote diagnosis and

cure, late tracking and other aspects, to achieve a

further integration of the two.

4.2 Comprehensively Collect, Deeply

Dig, Develop and Utilize TCM Big

Data Information

Big data is the basis and technical support to facilitate

the AI of TCM. To increase the experience of TCM,

books, and clinical case using big data collection,

analysis and mining, through the release of artificial

AI diagnosis and cure of pressure, reduce artificial

arbitrariness of diagnosis and cure, make the whole

process of TCM diagnosis and cure standard and AI

system, and realize the single function of TCM

diagnosis and cure to focus on the medical diagnosis

and cure and service, health information collection

and evaluation guidance, health warning and

reminder, multi-function, form a diversified clinical

data, to better serve patients and facilitate

modernization and internationalization of TCM to

provide support.

4.3 Inheriting Innovation and

Highlighting Characteristics,

Promoting the Evolution of TCM

Theories and Their Practical

Application

Inheritance, innovation is the foundation of all work

of traditional Chinese medicine, we must insist on

and upgrade TCM characteristic advantage, adhere to

the original thinking of TCM, make full use of

modern science and technology and method,

facilitate the evolution of TCM theory and practice,

promote the modernization of TCM, constantly form

new features and new advantages in innovation, new

generation of Chinese medicine forever.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The birth and development of computer technology

and artificial intelligence technology make medical

intelligent diagnosis and treatment service possible,

and its application value has been recognized by the

majority of medical workers. Driven by the concept

of precise, minimally invasive, curing causes, with

the maturity and development of "big data, artificial

intelligence, mobile Internet, cloud computing,

Internet of things, block chain", artificial intelligence

will further profoundly change the face of the future

medical wisdom, become a indispensable right-hand

man, make a significant contribution to the diagnosis

and treatment for various diseases.

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