ABSTRACT
Traditional tongue diagnosis is a vital basis of syndrome differentiation in TCM. The development of computer technology has opened up a new path to the tongue diagnosis modernization. The purpose of applying modernized tongue diagnosis into clinical research is for providing objective basis for diagnosis, TCM syndrome differentiation, evaluation of illness condition and efficacy evaluation. This article analyzed the application of modernized tongue diagnosis in clinical research in recent years, summarized the application status and existing problems of applying tongue color, texture, shape, indentation, sublingual veins, microcirculation, and spectrum analytical techniques into the clinical research, with a purpose to provide references for further research on modernized tongue diagnosis.