A fuzzy approach to overcome electroacupuncture accommodation
by Quan Min Zhu, Xiao Wei Sun, A.G. Pipe
International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control (IJMIC), Vol. 5, No. 3, 2008

Abstract: During Electroacupuncture (EA) therapy a sequence of pulsed electrical current is applied through a particular acupoint, to stimulate a patient's nerves and muscles. Human nerve systems can progressively develop adaptation to the electric stimulus and this can lead to a gradual fading away of sensation to the EA therapy. This phenomenon is called Electroacupuncture Accommodation (EAA) and occurs quite often in EA. Since the accommodation reduces the therapeutic effect dramatically, an extra dosage of current is normally supplemented to recover the therapeutic progress. In this study, an Electroacupuncture Accommodation Overcoming (EAAO) system, based on a Fuzzy Decision-Making (FDM) mechanism is developed. The imprecise and linguistic characteristics of EA knowledge are efficiently processed through the EAAO system to provide a selection of Pulse Amplitude (PA) and Pulse Width (PW) in forming the stimulating pulses that is based on an analysis of human expert knowledge. A simulated case study and a clinical test are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed EAAO system.

Online publication date: Tue, 10-Feb-2009

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