Research on information acquisition and manipulation representation (MR) method of traditional chinese medical massage (TCMM) based on multi-dimension force sensor

The basic requirement of TCMM manipulation is to be durable, strong, uniform and soft, but it lacks accurate, intuitive and quantitative representation, let alone the effective evaluation of massage manipulation with more experienced physiotherapist. Aiming at the above problems, this paper puts forward an information acquisition system based on the multi-dimension force sensor. Through this system, we can obtain the strength, direction and frequency of massage manipulation, we can also realize the MR of the manipulation data and make quantification comparison between the evenness of waveform. By the experiments, data which are related to five basic massage manipulations have been obtained, analyzed and compared using MR method, and it has proved that these force parameters basically conform to the respective massage manipulation characters, and thus verified the validity and practicability of this information acquisition system and the MR method.

I. Introduction

TCMM, as a traditional non-drug natural therapy, has an original curative effect in clinic [1−3, 5]. Modern medical research shows that massage can accelerate blood flow, increase tissue temperature, promote tissue regeneration, and can make positive changes to normal physiological function in biochemistry and blood circulation, etc. Therefore, the quality of the massage manipulation has an important impact on the functions of human organs [4]–[6]. Traditional Chinese Medicine theory holds that, basic requirements of massage manipulation is to be durable, strong, even, soft, and deep. Strong, soft and deep massage manipulation is closely related with the force of massage manipulation, while durable and even massage is greatly concerned with the frequency of massage manipulation [7]. The frequency of traditional massage is mainly between 30Hz-600Hz. The intensity and frequency requirements of different body parts are not the same [8]–[10].