[Quality control of the research on mechanisms of acupuncture therapy by using PET-CT imaging techniques].

Combining the functional metabolic imaging and anatomical imaging, PET-CT stands for the highest level of current nuclear medical imaging techniques, and has been applying increasingly in acupuncture studies. However, owning to complexity of the brain function and sensitivity of brain metabolism, the lower reproducibility of cerebral function imaging even may reverse many results. This has been provoked more and more attention by researchers. Its main cause is intimately related to poor experimental methodology. For this reason, the present paper raises the quality control of the research on mechanisms of acupuncture in the process of application of PET-CT techniques from (1) the included standards of participants, (2) the preparation of participants during the scanning process of PET-CT, (3) the setting of the scanning parameters, (4) the used machine and the imaging reagent, (5) the analysis of dada, (6) the standardization of acupuncture manipulation, and (7) the designs of the acupuncture operation, needling opportunity and scanning opportunity, hoping to offer some beneficial information for the coming researches.