Method for assessing women's perceptions of their appearance in the context of breast cancer care

重建外科手术的目标是恢复功能，减少形态(外观)上的差异。 先天的由先天条件、疾病或创伤引起的有大量和持续的生活质量 通过重建手术减少形态差异的好处。 许多女性选择接受乳房重建术以减轻乳腺癌引起的形态变化。 以及它的治疗方法。乳房重建是最常见的重建手术 完全是为了改善形式差异，而不是功能和形式意图的结合。 现代外科技术不能恢复正常的乳房感觉或哺乳，但可以重建乳房。 让患者满意的形式，促进她作为乳腺癌幸存者生活的心理社会适应。 医疗伦理的核心原则是自主、公正、仁爱、无恶意。一种特殊的 重建手术的伦理交付面临的挑战是难以对外观进行知情同意 变化。共享重建手术的决策需要患者有现实的期望 关于他们的身体形态将如何改变。但是，患者很难清楚地表达他们对如何 他们的外表将通过重建手术而改变，同样很难评估 旨在培养对手术结果的现实预期的干预措施。 这项探索性研究的主要目标是开发一种方法来评估女性对 她目前的躯干外观，以及乳腺癌治疗将如何改变她的外观，尽管 减轻重建程序的负担。我们的方法是受到心理物理原则的启发，即内部 刺激的表征可以从控制物理刺激的实验和观察者的 测量对刺激的反应。我们提出了一种系统的方法来表示女性的感知 根据她对自己与一组3D参考照片的相似程度来评价她的外表。

The goals of reconstructive surgery are to restore function and minimize differences in form (appearance) resulting from congenital conditions, disease, or trauma. There are substantial and sustained quality of life benefits of mitigating form differences through reconstructive surgery. Many women choose to undergo breast reconstruction to mitigate the form changes resulting from breast cancer and its treatment. Breast reconstruction is the most common reconstructive procedure that is performed exclusively to ameliorate form differences, as opposed to a combination of functional and form intents. Contemporary surgical techniques cannot restore normal breast sensation or lactation, but can recreate a breast form that is satisfying to the patient, facilitating her psychosocial adjustment to living as a breast cancer survivor. The core principles of healthcare ethics are autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence. A particular challenge in the ethical delivery of reconstructive surgery is the difficulty of informed consent about appearance change. Shared decision-making about reconstructive surgery requires that patients have realistic expectations about how their bodily form will be changed. But, it is difficult for patients to articulate their expectations of how their appearance will be changed by reconstructive surgery, and likewise difficult to evaluate the impact of interventions intended to foster realistic expectations of surgical outcomes. The overarching goal of this exploratory study is to develop a method for assessing a woman's perception of the current appearance of her torso and how her appearance will be changed by breast cancer treatment despite mitigating reconstructive procedures. Our approach is inspired by the psychophysical tenet that internal representations of stimuli can be inferred from experiments in which physical stimuli are controlled and observers' responses to the stimuli are measured. We propose a systematic method for representing a woman's perception of her appearance based on how similar she perceives herself to be to a set of 3D reference photographs.