Volume 11, Number 07, May 2021

FaceAtlasAR: Atlas of Facial Acupuncture Points in Augmented Reality

  Authors

Menghe Zhang¹, Jürgen P. Schulze¹ and Dong Zhang², ¹University of California, USA, ²Qilu University of Technology, China

  Abstract

Acupuncture is a technique in which practitioners stimulate specific points on the body. Those points, called acupuncture points (or acupoints), anatomically define areas on the skin relative to specific landmarks on the body. However, mapping the acupoints to individuals could be challenging for inexperienced acupuncturists. In this project, we proposed a system to localize and visualize facial acupoints for individuals in an augmented reality (AR) context. This system combines a face alignment model and a hair segmentation model to provide dense reference points for acupoints localization in real-time (60FPS). The localization process takes the proportional bone (B-cun or skeletal) measurement method, which is commonly operated by specialists; however, in the real practice, operators sometimes find it inaccurate due to the skillrelated error. With this system, users, even without any skills, can locate the facial acupoints as a part of the self-training or self-treatment process.

  Keywords

Augmented reality, Acupuncture point, Face alignment, Hair segmentation.