Positioning Standardized Acupuncture Points on the Whole Body Based on X-Ray Computed Tomography Images

Abstract

The goal of this research was to position all the standardized 361 acupuncture points on the entire human body based on a 3-dimensional (3D) virtual body. Digital data from a healthy Korean male with a normal body shape were obtained in the form of cross-sectional images generated by X-ray computed tomography (CT), and the 3D models for the bones and the skin's surface were created through the image-processing steps. The reference points or the landmarks were positioned based on the standard descriptions of the acupoints, and the formulae for the proportionalities between the acupoints and the reference points were presented. About 37% of the 361 standardized acupoints were automatically linked with the reference points, the reference points accounted for 11% of the 361 acupoints, and the remaining acupoints (52%) were positioned point-by-point by using the OpenGL 3D graphics libraries. Based on the projective 2D descriptions of the standard acupuncture points, the volumetric 3D acupoint model was developed; it was extracted from the X-ray CT images. This modality for positioning acupoints may modernize acupuncture research and enable acupuncture treatments to be more personalized.

Partially Automated Method for Localizing Standardized Acupuncture Points on the Heads of Digital Human Models

“…We found that the 37% of the 361 standardized acupoints on the entire body were automatically linked to the reference points. The reference points accounted for 11% of the 361 acupoints, and the remaining acupoints (52%) were positioned point-by-point by using 3D computer graphics libraries [ 16 ]. In this study, we increased the number of subjects to six and confined the positioning area to their heads.…”

“…The procedure for reconstructing the surfaces of the skin and the skull from the stack of 2D images of the six individual is basically the same as that used in [ 16 ] for a single person with a normal body shape. In brief, first, the DICOM images are converted to 8-bit BMP format because of memory issues.…”

“…A method for localizing the acupoints on the head of a virtual body by using segmentation and a 3D visualization of the VOXEL-MAN software system was reported [ 15 ]. Our initial research on positioning all the 361 standardized acupuncture points was done with the digital data from a healthy Korean male with a normal body shape [ 16 ]. The cross-sectional images generated by X-ray CT were used for generating the 3D virtual models for the bones and the skin's surface of the entire human body.…”

Robot-Controlled Acupuncture—An Innovative Step towards Modernization of the Ancient Traditional Medical Treatment Method

“…Given that the acupoints are defined in a 3D space, a 3D face model is useful for acupoint localization. The 3D Morphable Models (3DMM) [8,9,10,11] are common for face analysis because the intrinsic properties of 3D faces provide a representation that is immune to intra-personal variations. Given a single facial input image, a 3DMM can recover 3D face via a fitting process.…”

Anatomical Evidence of Acupuncture Meridians in the Human Extracellular Matrix: Results from a Macroscopic and Microscopic Interdisciplinary Multicentre Study on Human Corpses

“…Recent articles support a relationship between acupuncture points/meridians and fascia [1]. Specifically, anatomical observations of body scan data demonstrated that the fascia network resembles the theoretical meridian system in salient ways, and physiological, histological, and clinical observations support this hypothesis [11, 12].…”