The Location And Measurement Of Anatomical Landmarks

Acupuncture is an important part of Traditional Chinese Medicine with thousands years of history. And the acupoints location is the base of acupuncture. There are a variety of location methods because of thousands years'development. However, the accuracy of acupuncture location is still dependent on doctors'subjective judgment and personal experience.According to the National Standard, Anatomical Landmarks, Finger Cun Measurement and Bone Proportional Cun Measurement are three traditional methods to find the locations.'Cun'and Anatomical Landmarks are the two key elements for these three methods. And these two elements are the way to realize the double-blind technology for acupuncture location. But, there is still short of definite way on locating the landmarks without the error from individual factors. Up to now, it is still a problem to realize this step.Base on the Traditional Chinese Medicine definition of the anatomical landmarks, the foot model has been used for example in this paper. A novel method for landmarks location and measurement is designed here. Computer vision, image processing, mathematics calculation and other modern technologies support this method for success.The main job of this paper is as following:1) This paper designs an experimental platform which can rotate 360°. A high resolution CMOS camera is used to photograph of the object.2) This step can be called image preprocessing. Tilting correction, turn the RGB images into gray ones and images thresholding are the three necessary steps here.3) Compared with several different methods of extracting outline feature, this paper decided to use the Gabor filter for the image preprocessing because of its advantages in biology. And a Gabor filter was designed in detail4) Using Freeman code to extract image point feature. Realizing the coordinate translation and getting the coordinates of the lateral malleolus and medial malleolus.5) Designing a simple man-machine interface which convenient the users with some processes. This interface is made by MATLAB GUI. Through the image processing of the foot model, the landmarks on the foot was extracted successfully. And finally, the anatomical landmarks localization and measurement was realized by computer. This method prepare for the double-blind technology for acupuncture location which is benefit for the standardized, scientific and normalization of acupuncture location.