Towards Optimal Pain Relief: Acupuncture and Spinal Cord Stimulation

Authors

Richard Alo
Kenneth Alo
Obinna Ilochonwu
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Hoang Phuong Nguyen

Publication Date

12-1998

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-98-33

Published in: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Intelligent Virtual Environments, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, September 11-12, 1998, pp. 16-24.

Abstract

One of the important potential areas of application of intelligent virtual environment is to training medical doctors. One of the main problems in designing the corresponding intelligent system is the computational complexity of the corresponding computational problems. This computational complexity is especially high when the corresponding optimization is a discrete optimization problem, e.g., for pain relief methodologies such as acupuncture and spinal cord stimulation. In this paper, we show how to efficiently solve the corresponding discrete optimization problems. As a result, we get, e.g., a theoretical justification for the heuristic method of "guarded cathode".