Kinect-enhanced Lymphedema Intervention Training System

Breast cancer survivors often suffer from lymphedema, or abnormal accumulation of fluid in the affected arm or body, which causes abnormal swelling and multiple distressing and sometimes extremely painful symptoms. Lymphedema affects more than 40% of 3.1 million breast cancer survivors in the US. Co-Author Fu has developed effective intervention exercises that have been shown to lessen symptom severity and reduce the risk for chronic lymphedema.

Currently, patients learn to perform the intervention exercises through a nurse lead training session, which is costly and hard to maintain consistent intervention fidelity. The objective of this project is to develop a Kinect-enhanced intervention training system, which can track patients’ movement and provide instant audio-visual feedback to the patient, to enable the patient to follow the prescribed movement more accurately, thereby making the intervention more effective.

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                  Figure 1 Body Joints from Kinect

                  Figure 2 Exercises to Promote Lymph Fluid Flow

                  Figure 2 Lymphedema Intervention Training System

Sponsor:
National Institute of Health

Current Participants:
Yao Wang, Professor
Mei Fu, Professor
An-Ti Chiang, Ph.D student
Qingyuan Liu, Master student