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

重建手术的目标是恢复功能和减少形式（外观）的差异 由先天条件、疾病或创伤引起的。有实质性的和持续的生活质量 通过重建手术减轻形状差异的好处。 许多妇女选择接受乳房再造，以减轻形式的变化，造成乳腺癌 以及它的治疗。乳房重建是最常见的重建程序， 仅仅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泌乳，但可以再造乳房。 形式是令人满意的病人，促进她的心理社会调整生活作为一个乳腺癌幸存者。 医疗伦理的核心原则是自主、公正、有益和无害。特定 整形手术的伦理性挑战是关于外观的知情同意的困难 变化关于重建手术的共同决策要求患者有现实的期望 他们的身体形态会如何改变但是，患者很难表达他们对如何治疗的期望。 他们的外观将通过重建手术改变，同样难以评估重建手术的影响。 旨在促进对手术结果的现实期望的干预。 这项探索性研究的总体目标是开发一种方法，用于评估妇女对 她的躯干目前的外观，以及她的外观将如何改变乳腺癌治疗，尽管 减轻重建程序。我们的方法受到心理物理学原理的启发， 刺激的表征可以从实验中推断出来，在这些实验中，物理刺激是受控的，观察者的 测量对刺激的反应。我们提出了一个系统的方法来代表一个女人的看法 根据她对自己与一组3D参考照片的相似程度来判断她的外表。

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.