April 08, 2013

Surgical Video Recording: How I Do It

A number of people have asked how I go about video-recording surgeries... Beyond having hospital administration on board as well as obtaining appropriate consents from all involved parties, the technical aspects are actually quite straightforward.

I have tried all sorts of methods in order to obtain the closest and most vivid images possible. I tried cameras mounted on the surgical headlight which did work... but there was too much motion artifact leading to unusable footage. Even though I thought my head was absolutely still, it really was not. Click here to read more about  the difficulties with using head-mounted surgical video recording including google glass.

What I found worked best is using the video tower used for sinus surgery in my hospital with the camera-head attached to the overhead light-handle. Thankfully, my hospital uses HD equipment with 3CCD camera-head, so the video footage is spectacular. And because the camera-head is mounted on a light-handle, the footage obtained is absolutely still.

The footage is recorded digitally directly onto a hard drive which I than transfer to a USB thumb drive.

Along with this setup, I have a roaming individual with a hand-held camcorder to obtain different angled shots to add variety to the final movie.

So that's how I now do it!

The specific video equipment I use is a Conmed Linvatec HD System... however any sinus surgery video equipment should work even if analog.




Fauquier blog
Fauquier ENT

Dr. Christopher Chang is a private practice otolaryngology, head & neck surgeon specializing in the treatment of problems related to the ear, nose, and throat. Located in Warrenton, VA about 45 minutes west of Washington DC, he also provides inhalant allergy testing/treatment, hearing tests, and dispenses hearing aids.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Dr. Chang, I really enjoyed your post. I am working with OculoPlastic surgeons to create surgical training videos. I agree that head-mounted cameras are too unstable, and feel something that is mounted will have a better depth of field. How did you mount the endoscope to the light handle? Thank you very much.


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