Compressive stocking optimization for lymphedema treatment at lower-limb

Abstract

Lymphedema is a chronic disease that causes swelling in the soft tissues, mostly taking place in the extremities. This research focuses on the treatment of lymphedema through compression, which is widely applied to reduce the volume of edemas. Although effective at a clinical level, the use of off-the-shelf stockings with predefined sizes, reduces the efficiency at the patient-specific level. With the long-term goal of designing patient-specific stockings, this study aims to develop a real-time simulation tool, able to predict the efficiency of a given compression stocking for a given patient. For such purpose, the use of standard Finite Element Method (FEM) falls short due to high computational cost. Therefore, a solution based on Reduced Order Modeling (ROM) is developed to compute, in real-time, the hydrostatic pressure distribution at the location of the lymphatic dysfunction. It is assumed that hydrostatic pressure improves lymph circulation and increase the drainage capacity. This method enables to design the most efficient compressive stockings considering the particularities of each patient.

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