Acupoint stimulation device using focused ultrasound.

Acupuncture is used widely in oriental medicine. But it is difficult to stimulate continuously or intermittently in daily life with conventional acupuncture. An acupoint stimulation device using focused ultrasound has been developed. Because the device size is about 6 mm in diameter, it can be easily put on the skin during daily life. Appropriate stimulation intensity and pattern can be chosen by changing driving voltage and pattern. In this paper, we stimulated acupoints with this device and measured the blood flow volume of brachial artery. As a result, the blood flow volume increased significantly as well as acupuncture. Because the device stimulate acupoints with intactness of skin, advantages of this device is free from infection and fear and pain by insertion of acupuncture needles.

Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2010;1:1258-61. Tsuruoka N, Watanabe M, Seki T, Matsunaga T, Hagaa Y. Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.