Towards quantifying the aesthetic outcomes of breast cancer treatment: assessment of surgical scars.

Our long-term goal is to develop decision aids that will improve breast cancer treatment by explicitly taking aesthetics in the consideration. Essentially all breast cancer treatment involves surgery, which inevitably leaves scars. However, the extent and type of scarring is not the same for different surgeries (e.g., different forms of reconstruction.) We present our preliminary experiences in using image processing techniques to quantify scar characteristics in clinical photographs.