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

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.