Structured-light surface scanning system to evaluate breast morphology in standing and supine positions

Breast shapes are affected by gravitational loads and deformities. Measurements obtained in the standing position may not correlate well with measurements in the supine position, which is more representative of patient position during breast surgery. A dual color 3D surface imaging system capable of scanning patients in both supine and standing positions was developed to evaluate the effect of changes in body posture on breast morphology. The system was evaluated with  breast phantoms to assess accuracy, then tested on ten subjects in three body postures to assess its effectiveness as a clinical tool. The accuracy of the system was within 0.4 mm on average across the model. For the human study, there was no effect of body posture on breast volumes (p value > 0.05), but we observed an effect of completeness of breast scans on body posture (p value  < 0.05). Post-hoc tests showed that the supine position and the standing position with hands at the waist differed significantly (p value  < 0.05). This study shows that the system can quantitatively evaluate the effect of subject postures, and thereby has the potential to be used to investigate peri-operative changes in breast morphology.