Beijing, Feb 2 (IANS) Scientists in China claimed to have found a breakthrough in acupuncture therapy which would help detect cancer and brain tumours in patients at an early stage through a super powerful X-ray beam.

The researchers working on synchrotron have detected evidence that acupuncture points differ from other parts of the body.

X-ray beams emitted by the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) are 100 million times brighter, and 10,000 times more intense than the beam produced by a standard X-ray machine, said Xiao Tiqiao, head of the construction of SSRF's beamlines.

Last month, the SSRF has carried out a nine-month trial during which it found that the light sources help in the treatment of fatal cancers.

'The beamlines are just like super microscopes. They can contribute to the treatment of early-stage cancers by detecting the tumour cells that might be overlooked by the X-ray at hospital,' Xinhua quoted Xiao as saying.

'The SSRF had created a clear and detailed image of the tiny cephalic arteries of a living mouse, which could enable the observation of dynamic pathological changes in the human brain,' said Yang Guoyuan, deputy head of the Med-X Institute, also a user of the SSRF.

'In an experiment on rabbit tissue, we have found that at acupuncture point regions there exists the accumulation of micro-vessels. But the images taken in the surrounding tissue out of the acupuncture points do not show such structures,' said Zhang and his colleagues in the paper.

Their paper suggested that the structures had a link with the function of acupuncture points and played an important role in acupuncture treatments.

The SSRF could also shorten the period of developing a new drug by three to four years, said Shen Xu, a researcher with the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica under the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS).

The light sources could expose the three-dimensional structure of viruses, and thus help us design a drug to cure them, said Shen, who has been working on new drugs against cancers and diabetes mellitus.