ArticleHealthcare (Basel, Switzerland)2025
MetaAcuPoint: MetaHuman-Generated Synthetic Data for Hand Acupoint Localization.
Article in Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Two-Stage Cascaded Regression Framework for Automatic Facial Acupoint Localization in Infrared Thermal Images.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Synthetic data augmentation for improving performance in deep learning models for anatomical landmark localization on the distal upper limb.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2026Article
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8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPrecise localization of acupuncture points (acupoints) is crucial for the clinical success of Traditional Korean Medicine (TKM). Traditional methods that rely on visual inspection and palpation are subjective and prone to inter- and intra-observer differences, making standardization challenging. The progress of data-driven localization techniques is also limited by the scarcity of annotated datasets and inconsistent labeling quality.
objectiveThis study presents MetaAcuPoint, a synthetic dataset created to overcome these limitations by providing high-fidelity, anatomically consistent hand images for acupoint localization.
methodsMetaAcuPoint was generated using MetaHuman avatars within Unreal Engine, resulting in 900 RGB hand images. Anatomically aligned, bone-attached sockets were implemented for five diagnostically relevant hand acupoints, ensuring millimeter-level precision and spatial consistency across various hand poses. Dataset validity was assessed by training a high-resolution network (HRNet-W48) within the MMPose framework and testing its performance on real-world forearm images.
resultsThe synthetic-trained model achieved a mean distance error (MDE) of 5.67 ± 3.13 pixels, closely aligning with the real-data baseline at 4.81 ± 2.85 pixels. Adding synthetic samples to real data further enhanced performance (MDE: 4.95 pixels). In contrast, manually annotated synthetic images yielded poorer results (MDE: 12.76 pixels), emphasizing the advantages of automated anatomical annotation. Generalization tests across four external datasets confirmed that the synthetic data-trained model outperformed the real-data-trained model, maintaining higher accuracy (MDE: 5.84-6.45 mm vs. 10.63-15.80 mm).
conclusionsMetaAcuPoint demonstrates the first example of synthetic-to-real generalization for hand acupoint localization. By combining photorealistic rendering with anatomically grounded annotation, the dataset offers a reliable resource to promote standardized, data-driven approaches in acupuncture research and practice.
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