Acupuncture has been recognized by W.H.O. in 1989. It admits this therapy and accepts more than forty point on the external ear. After making thermograms to Odontology patiens treatred with Acupuncture, we were able to compare the temperature distribution maps and we found that they were quasi repetitive in the same zones on several patientes for a specific illness. We made this technique available to different patients that lack good irrigation on face and neck with the aim to establish patterns.

Keywords: Infrared Thermography, Odontology, Prosthesis, Acupuncture Diagnosis.

1. INTRODUCTION

Acupuncture is a millenary therapeutic method, but it is only in this century that great interest is taken in it in occidental medicine. The excellent results in the treatment of many clinical illnesses have made the occidental physicians study, respect and use it and the important advances in the knowledge of physiology, the new possibilities to make biochemical dosages and the progress in technology and electronics have contributed to the development of important research related to its action mechanism.
Even though acupuncture possesses its own philosophy and its theoretical bases, the explanations which emerged from ancient history with terms proper of another period are very difficult to integrate into the modern scientific terminology. The myths and the need to continue using the traditional terminology still persist as a consequence of the inability to complete better and more modern explanations. Nevertheless, we will have to go on using them until more adequate ones are found. The theoretical bases still are and will continue to be the same, the main difference being that the archaic language is what has been changing day after day, making the principles of acupuncture more comprehensible in our environment. For example, we admit that the illness is caused by an INN-IANG imbalance (opposing forces forming the universe manifested by the TCHI or energy that flows in our body) and that acupuncture acts balancing that disorder. Nowadays we can speak of physicochemical imbalances which, by means of treatment, tend to restore equilibrium or homeostasis. If we look at the body as a complex electronic system, we can consider that there are four general connection systems:

1) Nervous System: central and peripheral

2) Circulatory System with its arteries, veins and lymphatic vessels

3) Endocrine System, formed by the endocrine glands that secrete hormones promoting connections. These three systems interrelate and constitute the neuro-endocrine vascular regulation.

4) The fourth system or system of the chings (vessels, channels or organ meridians that flow lengthwise all over the skin) has exact points in its course that are the Chinese points or SHUE.

This system connects with the internal organs and with the other three systems. We could say that this is the oldest system appearing in the evolution of the living beings. Ontogenetically, that is from the point of view of the development of the embryo, we know that it is formed as of two cell layers: the ectoderm and the endoderm. The endoderm will build the skin and the central nervous system, having both the same origin, and the endoderm will originate the internal organs. It is so that the nervous system and the acupuncture meridians of the skin will be connected, related among them and with the internal organs.