1 Evaluation of upper limbs movements after surgery in breast cancer patients

With the high survival rate associated to breast cancer, there is more concern with the quality of life of the patient after the surgery. Likewise, non-invasive procedures have been used in order to reduce the impact that breast cancer may cause. Nevertheless, there is a chance to have some sort of impairment, since the surgical removal of the lymphatic nodes and radiotherapy, a common practice in breast cancer treatment, leads to damage in the upper limb mobility. This impairment is essentially characterized by low shoulder mobility and swelling, which precedes a chronical state of lymphedema, affecting the women’s daily life. In order to prevent such loss, it is recommended that the patient does some sort of exercise, keeping a daily routine of physical activity of the upper limb. This plan is developed accordingly with the clinical conditions presented by the patient; however, the measurement of these is usually made through subjective techniques, implying the possibility of errors. Similarly, in order to get better results, it is necessary an evaluation method able to measure all the factors that may interfere in the construction of the plan itself as, for example, the range of motion or the presence or absence of lymphedema. It is also important to have a system that, from the presented characteristics, is able to evaluate the manifestation of pain in the patient, its level or the existence of muscle sternness. The use of a RGB-D sensor like the Microsoft Kinect will allow collecting data to evaluate this parameters, using color and depth information and a skeleton algorithm for human body tracking. The method will then be validated through traditional measurements, like the water displacement and the circumferential measurement methods and personal surveys to understand the upper body function. 1