Computer Imaging Reliability
Video transcript: Computer imaging should be thought of as a tool that allows me to explain visually to a patient what to expect from their surgical outcome. It doesn't mean that their nose is going to look exactly like that, but it can really help if I can change some of the nasal features with computer imaging to explain to the patient why I do that and use examples of tilting the up tends to make the nose look a little shorter. I think just explaining that verbally doesn't really hit home the way showing them visually does. And so this is where it's really a useful tool.
Is it exactly the surgical result that you can expect? It's pretty close, usually the surgical results look a little bit more natural because sometimes the computer imaging produces straight lines that perhaps aren't really what you see naturally. But, I think overall it give patients a very good idea of what to expect, not only of the actual shape of the nose, but how that change in the shape of the nose looks relative to the rest of their face.
I think the main limitation with computer imaging is that it's difficult to make changes to the nose on a front view and that's because the imaging is a fairly simple software in that it moves image background in and out. When you're looking at a front view, of course the background is actually the persons cheeks and eyes, and you cant really move those in and out to simulate a change on a front view. But, I think that's the main limitation that we really see the obvious changes on profiles but not so much on the front views.