Research Article Experimental and Numerical Study on the Temperature Elevation in Tissue during Moxibustion Therapy Maxim Solovchuk , 1,2 Hong-An Deng, 1 andTonyW.H.Sheu 2,3 1 Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Nanomedicine, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli 35053, Taiwan 2 Department of Engineering Science and Ocean Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan 3 Center of Advanced Study in eoretical Sciences (CASTS), National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan Correspondence should be addressed to Maxim Solovchuk; solovchuk@gmail.com Received 14 August 2019; Revised 17 December 2019; Accepted 25 January 2020; Published 2 March 2020 Academic Editor: Sokcheon Pak Copyright © 2020 Maxim Solovchuk et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Moxibustion is a thermal therapy in traditional Chinese medicine that relies on the heat from burning moxa to be transferred beneath the skin surface. Although moxibustion has long been in widespread practice, the mechanism of heat transfer modality and temperature distribution during this treatment is not yet well understood. e current paper presents the first examination by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the three-dimensional temperature elevation during moxibustion treatment. A mathe- matical model for the prediction of temperature elevation during moxibustion therapy has been constructed and compared with the experimental data. Good agreement between the measured temperature and the results of numerical calculations has been found. Tissue up to 3cm deep can be heated during the treatment. It was revealed that both heat conduction and radiation heat transfer play important roles during the treatment. e results presented in the current paper can be used for understanding the mechanisms of Chinese medicine and developing useful guidelines for Chinese medicine doctors. 1.Introduction Traditional Chinese medicine has a history of thousands of years, since at least its earliest description in the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic in 99 BC. Practically speaking, traditional Chinese medicine includes both herbal remedies and acupuncture. In acupuncture and moxibustion treat- ments, mechanical and thermal stimulations of acupoints are used to induce biological reactions. Moxibustion is a thermal therapy in traditional Chinese medicine. ermal therapy is a widely known therapeutic procedure. Different heating sources can be used, including ultrasonic waves, electromagnetic waves, lasers, and micro- waves [1]. Heating tissue up to 41 ° C is used in physiotherapy and in the treatment of rheumatic diseases [1]. Temperatures of 41–45 ° C are applied in hyperthermia, with the treatment time ranging from half an hour to several hours. Tempera- tures higher than 50 ° C are used for the thermal ablation of tissue in the treatment of cancer and other applications [2–4]. Moxibustion is one of traditional Chinese medicines’ main thermal therapeutic modalities; it delivers heat stim- ulation to specific areas of the body, such as meridian points [5]. Moxibustion is used to treat a wide range of diseases. A bibliometric analysis of papers published from 1954 to 2007 revealed that moxibustion has been reported for treating 364 kinds of diseases [6]. Moxibustion therapy is most com- monly applied in cases of malposition, diarrhea, and colitis [7], followed by knee osteoarthritis, temporomandibular joint disturbance syndrome, soft tissue injury, heel pain, asthma, urinary retention, and herpes zoster [7]. Mox- ibustion and acupuncture rely on thermal and mechanical stimulations of particular points in the human body and inducing different biological reactions [8]. Although mox- ibustion is a common treatment in Taiwan, China, Japan, and Korea, its mechanisms such as heat transfer modality and temperature distribution are still unclear. Moxibustion consists of burning dried mugwort (moxa) over different parts of the body. Moxibustion therapy Hindawi Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2020, Article ID 7514302, 10 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/7514302