Figure 5

In-vivo localisation of the gold acupuncture needle inserted into the Dai mai point. The site of needle insertion is indicated by the white arrow. Image processing and reconstruction was done using the 3D volume rendering procedure of the multimodality module on the Hermes workstation. The color coding of the image allows the easy recognition of muscular structures of the abdomen. In this reconstruction the void effect of the gold needle is seen as a black area which reaches the muscular structures of the internal oblique muscle. Original MRI acquisition data: TR = 721, TE = 19, flip = 150, TH = 3, TF = 3, FOV = 370, MA = 320.