A Pulse Condition Reproduction Apparatus for Remote Traditional Chinese Medicine

Abstract

Pulse diagnosis is an integral part in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). However, the feeling of pulse condition is subjective and mysterious based on lots of practice and experience which brings many obstacles to pass on the skill. Additionally, in order to take full advantage of the limited resource of skillful TCM experts, remote TCM by Internet was proposed in recent years. Obviously, reproduction apparatus of pulse condition is of great importance in remote TCM system as well as pulse diagnosis education. In this paper, a pulse condition reproduction apparatus, which is used to reproduce corresponding pulse vibration according to the pulse condition data received from universal serial bus, was developed. To evaluate the performance of the apparatus, the reproduced pulse wave was measured and compared with the input pulse wave. Consequently, the correlation coefficients between the average output pulse waveforms and the input pulse waveforms is 0.9911 for normal pulse. The flowing sense of the pulse under fingers is indirectly demonstrated by the phase difference between adjacent fingers. Results indicated that the developed apparatus is available for pulse diagnosis education and remote palpation.