Objectives: The objective of this study is to compare the colour intensity of tongue body and that of tongue coat under the visible light and the ultraviolet light. Methods: We selected 7 subjects with completely or partially peeled tongue coat among the recruited 94 adults for the experiment. We took each tongue picture under the visible light and the ultraviolet light (315-400 nm) and then extracted sample images from the tongue body and tongue coat regions. Mean, median and mode of colour intensity from the sample images were calculated in 256 RGB system. Results: The green and the blue colour intensities of the tongue coats were significantly higher than those of the tongue bodies under the visible light. In all channels, the red, green and blue, the colour intensities of the tongue coats were significantly higher than those of the tongue bodies under the ultraviolet light. The colour differences between tongue coats and tongue bodies under the ultraviolet light were significantly higher than the colour differences under the visible light. Especially the colour difference under the ultraviolet light was highest in the green channel. Conclusions: We suggested that green colour image of the RGB system taken under the ultraviolet light could be used for more easy separating tongue coat region from tongue body.