INESC Porto IT System will Assess Breast Cancer Interventions
The latest challenge for the Telecommunications and Multimedia Unit (UTM) at INESC Porto is to create a leading system to compare the aesthetic results of breast cancer conservative treatment.
The project is called 3D BCT (3D Models for Aesthetic Evaluation and Prediction of Breast Cancer Interventions) and is a continuation of the research for the Breast Research Group. The recent work in this line of research allowed the Breast Cancer Group to develop the BCCT.core (Breast Cancer Conservation Treatment. cosmetic results), an IT system that assesses the aesthetic results of breast cancer conservative treatment.
The aim of 3D BCT is to overcome the limitations discovered in the previous study, as well as to address the current expectations with regards to the various different breast interventions available. The development of new techniques to treat breast cancer, namely oncoplastic surgery, led to problems in relation to the aesthetic analysis of the results and it also raised questions on how to select the most adequate technique to treat each patient.
A photograph of the patient is not enough to perform the assessment and evaluation. Furthermore, despite the 3D images having strong potential, there are various factors that limit their use on a large scale, such as the high cost of the equipment and the need for personnel to perform the scans, merge the images and perform volumetric analysis. Therefore, 3D BCT focuses on the development of 3D reconstructions using one or more non-calibrated images of the patient.
Another of the project’s aims is to research a method that can automatically configure a parametric model that can be shaped according to the three dimensional data of the patient's breasts using an approach inspired by physical models. This model will be used in the quantitative assessment of the aesthetics results of the various possible surgical procedures.
3D BCT is a three year FCT project (the Foundation of Science and Technology) in collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP). INESC Porto is represented in this project by Jaime Cardoso and Hélder Oliveira from UTM.