title: Digital recording in microsurgery. Technical note.
abstract: The authors examine the quality of intraoperative photography in which digital recording technology, including a microdigital camera and digital video paired with an operating microscope, is used during neurosurgery. A microdigital camera developed for this purpose (1.4 million pixels) was attached to an operating microscope and used during surgery. The same surgical views with precisely the same optical conditions were taken through the microscope by using both a conventional 35-mm camera and the microdigital camera, and the quality of the final output was compared. In addition, the quality of the digital camera photographs was compared with the still photograph clipped from the digital video recording. The quality of the photographs taken with a microdigital camera was superior to the quality of those obtained with the conventional 35-mm camera. The success rate of recording (what you see is what you get) was almost 100%. The quality of the still photographs clipped from the digital video was nearly equal to those taken with the digital camera. The microdigital camera system is superior to the conventional 35-mm camera in neurosurgery in terms of its success rate and the quality of the photography. It is also a space-saving system for storing the huge amount of data generated in the recording of surgical procedures, and the cost/performance ratio is superior to that of the conventional method. Digital technology including digital cameras and videos is very useful for clear recording of microsurgical procedures.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, Hokkaido University School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan. khokin@med.hokudai.ac.jp
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Houkin
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuroda
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007432:Intraoperative Period; D008866:Microsurgery; D010781:Photography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*