E-faceatlasAR: extend atlas of facial acupuncture points with auricular maps in augmented reality for self-acupressure

Acupuncture is a form of alternative medicine from ancient times and adapted to modern medicine. One typical practice of acupuncture is putting pressure on specific sites (acupuncture points, or acupoints) in the body, called acupressure. Self-acupressure refers to people applying pressure on acupoints using fingers, palms, or special devices to themselves. It has been widely applied because of its convenience and effectiveness. However, localizing the acupoints in any acupuncture practice requires expert knowledge. Novices without any medical background typically find it difficult because of the lack of visual cues. Our previous prototype, FaceAtlasAR, stresses this issue by localizing and overlaying facial acupoints in the augmented reality (AR) context in real-time. This paper will present E-FaceAtlasAR, which extends FaceAtlasAR to show auricular zone maps in the meantime. The system first localizes facial acupoints and auricular zone map in an anatomical yet feasible way. Then, it overlays the requested acupoints and auricular zone maps on the ears in AR. We adopt Mediapipe, a cross-platform machine learning framework, to build the real-time pipeline that runs on desktop and Android phones. Also, we conducted extensive experiments to show its effectiveness and robustness. With this system, users, even not professionals, can position the acupoints quickly for their self-acupressure treatments.