Skip to main content
2023 BMES Annual Meeting Main banner
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.
Back

    Women's Health

    (L-469) Perceptual Map of Breast Reconstruction Appearance Outcomes

    Thursday, October 12, 2023
    9:30 AM – 10:30 AM PDT
    Location: Exhibit Hall - Row L - Poster # 469

      Presenting Author(s)

    • HW

      Haoqi Wang

      Graduate Research Assistant
      The University of Texas at Austin, United States

      • Co-Author(s)

    • SC

      Seung Choi

      Professor
      The University of Texas at Austin, United States

    • GR

      Gregory Reece (he/him/his)

      Professor
      The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States

    • CP

      Christopher Parham

      Assistant Professor
      The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States

    • MB

      Mary Catherine Bordes

      Clinical Studies Coordinator
      The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States

    • MH

      Michael Hout

      Associate Professor
      New Mexico State University, United States

      • Primary Investigator(s)

    • Mia Markey, PhD (she/they)

      Professor
      The University of Texas at Austin
      Austin, Texas, United States

    Introduction::
    A challenge in the ethical delivery of breast reconstruction is informed consent regarding appearance change, as it is difficult for providers and patients to communicate their different expectations. With the aim of developing a communication tool based on comparisons to reference photographs, we conducted observer experiments to assess the visual similarities among breast reconstruction outcomes and to establish a perceptual map.




    Materials and Methods:: 3D photographs of breast reconstruction outcomes were purposefully sampled to maximize diversity (BMI, age, reconstruction type, etc., Figure 1A). We recruited observers who had undergone surgery to prevent or treat breast cancer. We used the spatial arrangement method [1] to collect their perceptions of similarity among reconstruction outcomes. The similarity data were aggregated across observers. We then used Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) to construct a perceptual map and analyze its latent dimensions.

    Results, Conclusions, and Discussions::
    From a small observer study (n = 10), we established a perceptual map in two dimensions (Figure 1A). Analysis of the latent dimensions showed that the number of nipples that the patient had when the photograph was taken may be important to observers when they compare surgical outcomes (Figure 1B). A support vector machine (SVM) partitioned the perceptual map into three 3 regions, where the blue, gray, and red regions correspond to the presence of 0, 1, and 2 nipples, respectively, in the photographs.

    A perceptual map can provide insight about factors impacting patients’ perceptions of breast reconstruction outcomes, e.g., the number of nipples that the patient had when the photograph was taken. Additional analyses are necessary to investigate other possible factors such as symmetry of the breast mounds and ptosis.





    Acknowledgements (Optional): : This study was supported by NIH grant R21 EB031317.

    References (Optional): : [1] Hout MC, Goldinger SD, Ferguson RW. The versatility of SpAM: a fast, efficient, spatial method of data collection for multidimensional scaling. J Exp Psychol Gen. 2013;142(1):256-281. doi:10.1037/a0028860