[Application of laser speckle contrast imaging technology to researches on acupuncture and microcirculation]

The therapeutic effect of acupuncture is often closely related to the improvement of microcirculation. Acupuncture stimulation can adjust pathophysiological changes of microcirculation in the human body through multiple ways, multiple links and multiple levels, healing disorders at last. Laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI), an emerging technology, can be used to study the effect of acupuncture on microcirculation. In this paper, retrieving the related literature published in recent years, we found that LSCI technology has already been applied to the following aspects 1) acupoint-viscera and microcirculation, 2) stimulation-induced transmission of sensations along the meridian and microcirculation, 3) non-meridians or non-acupoints and microcirculation, 4) specific acupoints and microcirculation, as well as 5) different acupuncture needle manipulations and microcirculation. However, most of the studies focused on animal experiments and healthy subjects, observing microcirculatory effects under normal physiological conditions, and the sample size of participants was smaller. In the future, we highly recommend that increasing the sample size and further studying the local microcirculation are necessary in the pathological state of diseases.