I-Corps: Lymphedema Intervention Exercise for Breast Cancer Survivors

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is its benefit for millions of individuals who are at risk for or have developed chronic lymphedema, including patients who have been treated for breast cancer and other cancers (head and neck, prostate, melanoma, gynaecological cancer). Lymphedema is a progressive and chronic swelling with many distressful symptoms after cancer treatment. Each year, 1.38 million women worldwide and more than 230,000 women in the US are diagnosed with breast cancer. At least 20-40% of breast cancer survivors have developed lymphedema and the rest of them are at lifelong risk for lymphedema. This project further develops a lymphatic therapy effective in reducing the risk of lymphedema and relieving lymphedema symptoms for breast cancer survivors. The approach may potentially be applied more broadly to individuals with chronic heart failure, end-stage renal disease and hypertension with similar abnormal fluid accumulation symptoms. This I-Corps project explores the commercial potential of a lymphatic therapy. The core technology consists of a physical therapy system that can automatically and accurately track a patient's movement and evaluate it against the desired movement. The system provides instant feedback on whether a patient is performing an exercise correctly and how should the patient make adjustments in their movement. Furthermore, the system will be designed to motivate the patient to perform the therapy correctly and regularly. The system will leverage the novel computer vision and machine learning algorithms being developed in an on-going research project in order to overcome the sensor constraints in detecting joint positions and the significant variability of the normal range of the desired movement, which are the major technical obstacles faced by current sensor-based physical therapy systems.