Modeling and evoluting of relation between acupuncture points and diseases based on multi-dimension networks

In this paper, we establish a model to describe the relationship between acupuncture points and diseases and we study its evolution based on multi-dimension networks. Firstly, we build a multi-dimension network called acupoint-disease network by using data from traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture books. Secondly, we reduce the network dimension to form a disease-based acupoint network and an acupoint-based disease network respectively. The static characteristics of these two networks, which include clustering coefficient, average path length and small-world character etc, are analyzed. Thirdly, we put forward a network evolution model and its algorithms. Finally, we compare the analyzed results above with the traditional Chinese medicine theory, which indicates that the results totally conform to traditional Chinese medicine theory.