Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Dec 11:4:ojab052.
doi: 10.1093/asjof/ojab052. eCollection 2022.

BreastGAN: Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Breast Augmentation Simulation

Christian Chartier  1 , Ayden Watt  2 , Owen Lin  3 , Akash Chandawarkar  4 , James Lee  5 , Elizabeth Hall-Findlay  1   2   3   4   5
Affiliations

BreastGAN: Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Breast Augmentation Simulation

Christian Chartier et al. Aesthet Surg J Open Forum. .

Abstract

Background: Managing patient expectations is important to ensuring patient satisfaction in aesthetic medicine. To this end, computer technology developed to photograph, digitize, and manipulate three-dimensional (3D) objects has been applied to the female breast. However, the systems remain complex, physically cumbersome, and extremely expensive.

Objectives: The authors of the current study wish to introduce the plastic surgery community to BreastGAN, a portable, artificial intelligence (AI)-equipped tool trained on real clinical images to simulate breast augmentation outcomes.

Methods: Charts of all patients who underwent bilateral breast augmentation performed by the senior author were retrieved and analyzed. Frontal before and after images were collected from each patient's chart, cropped in a standardized fashion, and used to train a neural network designed to manipulate before images to simulate a surgical result. AI-generated frontal after images were then compared with the real surgical results.

Results: Standardizing the evaluation of surgical results is a timeless challenge which persists in the context of AI-synthesized after images. In this study, AI-generated images were comparable to real surgical results.

Conclusions: This study features a portable, cost-effective neural network trained on real clinical images and designed to simulate surgical results following bilateral breast augmentation. Tools trained on a larger dataset of standardized surgical image pairs will be the subject of future studies.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Overview of a clinical generative adversarial network (GAN). AI, artificial intelligence.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Sample of artificial intelligence-generated surgical results retrieved throughout the training process: (A) Epoch 1, (B) Epoch 50, (C) Epoch 100, (D) Epoch 150, (E) Epoch 200, and (F) Epoch 250.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Sample of BreastGAN testing results: (A) 35-year-old female, (B) 42-year-old female, (C) 44-year-old female, (D) 44-year-old female, and (E) 39-year-old female. Leftmost panels are true preoperative images; middle panels are BreastGAN-simulated postoperative results; rightmost panels are true postoperative images.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Poulsen L, Klassen A, Jhanwar S, et al. Patient expectations of bariatric and body contouring surgery. Plast Reconstr Surg Glob Open. 2016;4(4):e694. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Creasman CN, Mordaunt D, Liolios T, Chiu C, Gabriel A, Maxwell GP. Four-dimensional breast imaging, part I: introduction of a technology-driven, evidence-based approach to breast augmentation planning. Aesthet Surg J. 2011;31(8):914-924. - PubMed
    1. Creasman CN, Mordaunt D, Liolios T, Chiu C, Gabriel A, Maxwell GP. Four-dimensional breast imaging, part II: clinical implementation and validation of a computer imaging system for breast augmentation planning. Aesthet Surg J. 2011;31(8):925-938. - PubMed
    1. Adams WP Jr, Mckee D. Matching the implant to the breast: a systematic review of implant size selection systems for breast augmentation. Plast Reconstr Surg. 2016;138(5):987-994. - PubMed
    1. Costa CR, Small KH, Adams WP Jr. Bra sizing and the plastic surgery herd effect: are breast augmentation patients getting accurate information? Aesthet Surg J. 2017;37(4):421-427. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources