Acu Glass: Quantifying Acupuncture Therapy using Google Glass

Abstract

Acupuncture is a therapeutic or preventative therapy through the stimulation on acupoints that located on the body surface across the anatomy to affect the functions of specific organs or soft tissues. During the acupuncture training process, mapping the acupuncture map to patients could be a challenging work since the trainees mainly rely on the instruction from experienced acupuncturists. In this study, a wearable acupuncture assistant system using augmented reality technology was introduced to record the whole treatment process with augmented information that quantified the traditional acupuncture practice. Through constructing a dynamic, personalized, and self-regulating map of virtual acupoints, the system quantified the coordinates of the acupoints to form a basic guideline to help the trainee to recall the type and location of acupuncture map. The experimental results show that the proposed system could record the coordinate of acupoints in real time and the augmented information also has the potential to be a visual guide during treatment.