Location and Measurement of Acupoints on Head-Model Based on Structured-Light Scanning

Abstract

408 acupoints of human body, including 362 acupoints of the fourteen meridians and 46 extra points, are the exit and entrance of the Viscera Meridians energy. The acupoints location is fundamental to study Chinese Medicine. The paper presents a new precision modeling and measuring technology for acupoints location on head-model based on machine vision. The head-model is measured fast and accurately by the structured-light scanning. The digital model of head-model can be made from the cloudy data through the acquisition, align, merge, and edit. The head-model coordinate systems based on the geometric morphometry is developed for dynamic measurement of an unfixed live head in which any acupoints coordinate can be measured. The plane is established based on the symmetric head. The curve of the plane across nose is fitted by the least-square method. The origin is acquired from the curve first derivative, which is unique and accurate. The tangent through the origin is defined as Z-axis. The line through the origin, perpendicular to the symmetric plane and XZ-plane are defined as X-axis and Y-axis respectively. Some important geometric parameters of the head-model are measured accurately by the digital model such as distance between all pairs of acupoints and interior angles from a triangulation of the acupoints in order to assistant locating the acupoints well. The proposed strategy in this study provides powerful weapons for acupoints location in Traditional Chinese Medicine.