Korean Acupuncture Points
Throughout the history of East Asian medicine, different kinds of acupuncture treatment experiences have been accumulated in classical medical texts. In Korea, the medical book DongUiBoGam is considered as the representative of Korean medicine. This classic medical publication was completed in 1610 and published in 1613 under the Joseon Dynasty by a royal physician Heo Jun (1539–1615). It includes latest medical texts published in East Asia until then and constitutes unique medical perspective on understanding the human body and treating disorders. Because of its significant value in medical aspects in East Asia, it became registered in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program in 2009.
In the field of East Asian medicine, various treatment experiences collected over time gradually formulated certain medical theories. Such medical theories inversely synthesized a series of treatment processes including diagnosis, pattern identification, and prescription. Pattern identification is a method of thinking which provides evidence for treatment by synthesizing and analyzing clinical data and differentiating patterns. In East Asian medicine, methods of diagnosis and diagnostic classifications usually have preceded to identify the pattern of a certain disorder before actual treatment . Traditional ways of diagnosis and diagnostic classifications were widely shared among physicians throughout the history of East Asian countries. However, each physician’s detailed interpretations on the diagnostic information for pattern identification were not necessarily identical. Since pattern identification closely related to the physician’s academic backgrounds, if one physician has different academic perspective from the others, the way of pattern identification could be varied. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate each way of pattern identification to figure out how it worked in the actual practice.
The publication of DongUiBoGam enabled Korea to develop unique acupuncture treatment theories. Generally, acupoints and the target disorder can be related by the knowledge of the meridian system and its relevant organs. This process can be determined more in detail. When physicians treat patients with acupuncture, they can select the appropriate acupoints according to three basic principles: (1) local acupoints near the area where symptoms occur, (2) distant acupoints along the meridian, and (3) distant acupoints based on pattern identification. The first two principles of selecting acupoints are obvious if the knowledge on the meridian is understood. However, pattern identification, the key element of the third principle, is somewhat complex compared to the other principles. There are various ways of pattern identification by East Asian medical physicians according to their different academic backgrounds. In order to understand acupuncture treatments in DongUiBoGam, therefore, we need to study the way of pattern identification of this book.
To clarify the unique characteristics of East Asian medicine, several studies have attempted to reveal the relationship between treating methods and patterns using data mining and network science. In one study, data mining algorithms were used to uncover useful patterns from various fields including classical East Asian medicine texts. Currently, developing a practical clinical decision support system for acupuncture therapy is required; it should make full use of modern methodologies of evidence-based medicine and utilize the abundant available information in current databases and data mining techniques. Both research methodologies are providing new opportunities for understanding complex acupoint characteristics based on pattern identification. However, systematic research on how to select acupoints based on pattern identification is still limited.
In this study, we analyzed and visualized the association between acupoints and patterns of disorders from the medical book DongUiBoGam using data mining methods. Before analyzing this association, we categorized various patterns of disorders into 25 patterns according to DongUiBoGam. Our results demonstrate how to acquire practical information for selecting acupoints based on pattern identification and help elucidate the characteristics of each acupoint regarding its relationship with components of pattern identification.
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