doi:10.1016/j.imavis.2004.03.005 
Copyright © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Localization of acupoints on a head based on a 3D virtual body
Lei Zhenga, Binjie Qina, Tiange Zhuang
, 
, a, Ulf Tiedeb and Karl Heinz Höhneb
a Department of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
b Institute of Medical Informatics (IMI), University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
Received 11 February 2004;
Revised 15 March 2004;
accepted 31 March 2004.
Available online 13 August 2004.
References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must
purchase this article.
Abstract
Modern computer science allows powerful and versatile computer-based knowledge representations of acupuncture, one part of Traditional Chinese Medicine. For further research and development of acupuncture therapy, it is critical to define where to accurately localize acupoints onto such a computer based pictorial representation of the human body. Using the segmentation and 3D visualization of the VOXEL-MAN software system, original work for localizing the acupoints on a head based of a virtual body is reported in this paper. The proposed 2D acupoint description links the description taken from literature for locating acupoints in Traditional Chinese Medicine to the data in the absolute reference frame of a 3D virtual body. It offers a simple and useful way for the localization of acupoints on a 3D model, especially one derived from the data from Visible Human Project.
Author Keywords: Traditional Chinese Medicine; Acupuncture and moxibustion; Localization of acupoints; Three-dimensional body model; Visible Human Project; VOXEL-MAN
Fig. 1. Definition of TRF (1). Left: the position of the origin on a 3D virtual body. Right: the direction of the axes with the same view angle as the left.
Fig. 2. The symmetry property of a virtual head. Left: a symmetry slice of the head. Right: the principal axes of the virtual head, while P1 is considered to point out the normal direction of the median longitudinal section.
Fig. 3. Definition of TRF (2). Left: the position of the reference points (point A,B and C). Right: the relationship of the points, axes and planes. Note: point B and C are not always on the plane xz.
Fig. 4. Several Acupoint labels from TCM.
Fig. 5. 2D Acupoint description.
Fig. 6. Model of median longitudinal circle. Left: the reference points (point A,D and E) on median longitudinal circle. Right: definition of ‘vertical cun’ from TCM.
Fig. 7. Model of face meshes. Left: the position of the reference point F. Right: the coordinate meshes in the face of the 3D virtual body.
Fig. 8. Model of bone projection. Left: the position of the reference point G. Right: the coordinate meshes on the side-head of the 3D virtual body.
Fig. 9. 3D description of Acupoints. Left: based on VOXEL-MAN: brain and skull. Right: based on VOXEL-MAN: visible human.
Table A1. Position of Acupoints in the face (Plane α)
Table A2. Position of Acupoints on the top-head (Plane β)
Table A3. Position of Acupoints on the side-head (Plane γ)
Abstract
Purchase PDF (517 K)
E-mail Article
Add to my Quick Links
Cited By in Scopus (2)
Purchase PDF (102 K)
