Prof. Kun-chan Lan
National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Speech Title: "AI-assisted Laser Acupuncture for Home Care"

Abstract: Acupuncture is one of the main modalities of treatment methods in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The reason why it can have become popular among the people is that the stimulation of acupuncture points are quite simple and safe. The history of acupuncture is based on long-term experiment, observation, thinking by ancient Chinese. Large amount of traditional Chinese medicine literature and more than one thousand independent scientific research papers have shown the effectiveness of acupuncture. However, some people might be reluctant to receive needle acupuncture treatment due to fear of pain. Laser acupuncture, thanks to its painless and infection-free advantages, has recently become an alternative choice to traditional acupuncture. However, given the large number of acupuncture points and the complexity of their specificity, it is difficult for one to remember the location and function of each acupuncture point without extensive training. In this talk, I will discuss our recent work in developing a robotic laser acupuncture system through integrating AI algorithms and IoT techniques. With our proposed system, the patient can quickly relieve his/her symptoms without the help from TCM physicians. Our vision is to make such a smartphone-based system to be used for a home treatment or as a point-of-care service in the future.