Breast cancer survivors' perceptual map of breast reconstruction appearance outcomes

Abstract

Purpose: It is often hard for patients to articulate their expectations about breast reconstruction appearance outcomes to their providers. Our overarching goal is to develop a tool to help patients visually express what they expect to look like after reconstruction. We aim to comprehensively understand how breast cancer survivors perceive diverse breast appearance states by mapping them onto a low-dimensional Euclidean space, which simplifies the complex information about perceptual similarity relationships into a more interpretable form.

Approach: We recruited breast cancer survivors and conducted observer experiments to assess the visual similarities among clinical photographs depicting a range of appearances of the torso relevant to breast reconstruction. Then, we developed a perceptual map to illuminate how breast cancer survivors perceive and distinguish among these appearance states.

Results: We sampled 100 photographs as stimuli and recruited 34 breast cancer survivors locally. The resulting perceptual map, constructed in two dimensions, offers valuable insights into factors influencing breast cancer survivors' perceptions of breast reconstruction outcomes. Our findings highlight specific aspects, such as the number of nipples, symmetry, ptosis, scars, and breast shape, that emerge as particularly noteworthy for breast cancer survivors.

Conclusions: Analysis of the perceptual map identified factors associated with breast cancer survivors' perceptions of breast appearance states that should be emphasized in the appearance consultation process. The perceptual map could be used to assist patients in visually expressing what they expect to look like. Our study lays the groundwork for evaluating interventions intended to help patients form realistic expectations.

Keywords: breast cancer; breast reconstruction; medical image perception; perceptual map; similarity perception; three-dimensional photography.