Monitoring Cortices Response to Acupunctures with a Functional Near Infrared Imaging System

Acupuncture has been used and proved to be effective in the treatment of some diseases. In this paper a functional near infrared (fNIR) imaging system was used to monitor the cortices response to acupunctures in clinical experiments. The imaging system is based on continuous-wave NIR imaging technique. In clinical experiments, acupunctures were firstly applied to a group of volunteers to investigate their cortices response. Then in the contrast experiments both sticking ear bean and actual needle acupuncture were applied to validate the cortices response. The clinical studies show that acupuncture can stimulate frontal brain activity to a certain extent and increase the cerebral blood volumes (CBVs) near the sub-surface of the frontal brain. Results show that fNIR imaging is capable of non-invasively monitoring the acupunctures treatment.