Chinese acupuncture practitioners primarily depend on muscle memory and tactile feedback to insert needles and accurately target acupuncture points, as the current workflow lacks imaging modalities and visual aids. Consequently, new practitioners often learn through trial and error, requiring years of experience to become proficient and earn the trust of patients. Medical students face similar challenges in mastering this skill. To address these challenges, we developed an innovative system, MRUCT, that integrates ultrasonic computed tomography (UCT) with mixed reality (MR) technology to visualize acupuncture points in real-time. This system offers offline image registration and real-time guidance during needle insertion, enabling them to accurately position needles based on anatomical structures such as bones, muscles, and auto-generated reference points, with the potential for clinical implementation. In this paper, we outline the non-rigid registration methods used to reconstruct anatomical structures from UCT data, as well as the key design considerations of the MR system. We evaluated two different 3D user interface (3DUI) designs and compared the performance of our system to traditional workflows for both new practitioners and medical students. The results highlight the potential of MR to enhance therapeutic medical practices and demonstrate the effectiveness of the system we developed.

翻译：中国针灸医师主要依赖肌肉记忆和触觉反馈进行针刺操作并准确定位穴位，因为当前工作流程缺乏影像模态和视觉辅助手段。因此，初学者通常需要通过反复试错来学习，需要多年经验才能熟练掌握并获得患者信任。医学生在掌握这项技能时也面临类似挑战。为应对这些挑战，我们开发了一套创新系统MRUCT，该系统将超声计算机断层扫描（UCT）与混合现实（MR）技术相结合，实现穴位实时可视化。该系统支持离线图像配准和针刺过程中的实时引导，使操作者能够根据骨骼、肌肉及自动生成的参考点等解剖结构准确定位针具，具备临床应用的潜力。本文阐述了基于UCT数据重建解剖结构的非刚性配准方法，以及MR系统的关键设计考量。我们评估了两种不同的三维用户界面（3DUI）设计方案，并将本系统与传统工作流程在初学者和医学生群体中的表现进行了对比。研究结果凸显了MR技术在增强治疗性医疗实践方面的潜力，并证明了我们所开发系统的有效性。