Acupoint Selection for Autonomous Massage Based on Infrared Thermography

After breast cancer surgery, the patient has difficulty in selecting the acupoints for autonomous massage, due to the changes in muscles and nerves on the affected side. To overcome the difficulty, this paper proposes an acupoint selection method for autonomous massage after breast cancer surgery, based on infrared thermography. Firstly, the contrast of the infrared thermogram was enhanced by image differencing, and the chest region and upper limbs were segmented through global thresholding. Next, temperature specific detection and edge detection algorithms were combined to automatically locate the main chest organs, and the horizontal and vertical axes of the upper limbs, according to the temperature specificity and temperature variation induced by the physiological structure of chest and upper limbs. Furthermore, the main acupoints for autonomous massage were determined, based on their positions relative to the axes of main organs. Experimental results show that our method achieved a positioning accuracy greater than 90.12%. The excellent positioning effect improves the compliance of patients in active rehabilitation.