ABSTRACT
Due to its simplicity and convenience, acupuncture has become popular as a complementary therapy. In this Chinese medicine, doctors have to find the traditional meridian acupuncture points before puncturing the needles into them. Moxibustion ( Ài JiÇ) is also an important part of the acupuncture remedy. Treatment by acupuncture can be classified roughly into two types - direct moxibustion and indirect moxibustion. Warm-needling acupuncture ( Wen Zhen JiÇ) is classified under the method of indirect moxibustion. In the present study, 10 standard stainless steel acupuncture needles with 10 pieces of cylinder-shaped moxa cone ( Ài Zhù) as the heat source of warm needles were used. In order to prevent the practitioners from getting burns, it is necessary to study the temperature changes in some designated parts of the needles. Two sizes, 0.6 g and 1.0 g, of moxa cones were used for comparison of the measured temperatures. The needles are typically divided into two parts - the handle part and the needle body. In our experiment, the temperatures of WNA at different parts of the needles were measured. The larger the size of moxa cone is, the longer is the burning time. Based on the observations we suggest that when 0.6 g moxa is used, the physicians should better pick out the needles around 9 min after ignition; however, while using the 1 g moxa, it might be safer to pick out the needles around 13 min after ignition.
ABSTRACT
Tongue diagnosis is an important practice in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for diagnosing diseases before determining proper means of treatments. Traditionally, it depends solely on personal knowledge and experience of the practitioner, thereby being criticized as lacking of objectivity. Currently, no research regarding intra- and inter-agreements of automatic tongue diagnosis system (ATDS) and TCM doctors has been conducted. In this study, the ATDS is developed to extract a variety of tongue features and provide practitioners with objective information to assist diagnoses. To evaluate the ATDS clinical stability, 2 sets of tongue images taken 1 hour apart from 20 patients with possible variations in lighting and extruding tongue, are employed to investigate intra-agreement of the ATDS, intra-agreement of the TCM doctors, and the inter-agreement between the ATDS and TCM doctors. The ATDS is shown to be more consistent with significantly higher intra-agreement than the TCM doctors (kappa value: 0.93 ± 0.06 versus 0.64 ± 0.13) with P < 0.001 (Student's t-test). Inter-agreements between the ATDS and TCM doctors, as well as among the TCM doctors are both moderate. The high agreement of the ATDS can provide objective and reliable tongue features to facilitate doctor in making effective observation and diagnosis of specific diseases.
