Surgeon Performs World's First 4X HD Surgery

docinthemachine writes with word of some "research just presented at the 65th ASRM on 4K surgery. Using bleeding-edge Hollywood 4K cameras coupled to laparoscopes, surgery was performed in 4K, or 4X the resolution of HD. Since laparoscopy is performed while viewing on a video monitor, this is a huge advancement of resolution and clarity for the surgeon. It only took a million dollars of projectors to show it to the audience."

Re:4x HD for $1m

[TangoMargarine]

From the article:

Why we did it- the Hollywood connection: New cinematic technologies are transforming the film business today. The two major revolutionary developments are 1) beyond high def “4k” technology - which brings resolution to 4 times that of HD and 2) realistic immersive high definition 3D. I set out to introduce these technologies to the medical world and to see if we could for the first time directly perform surgery in 4k. Setting the goal to once again use technological innovation to improve our patient outcomes.

In other words, "We did it because HD is a buzzword." If the camera is less than a few cm away from what you're looking at, do you really need that high of a resolution?

Yes, you do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Surgery is a rather imprecise and hackish profession, even today. The more high resolution the pictures you can give to a surgeon, the more solid their repairs can be. Laparoscopy took surgeries that used to leave huge 4" incisions across peoples chests down to a surgery which leave you with a few bandaid-sized scratches. Internally, even scratches of those sizes still take too long to heal; the smaller and more well-defined the repair, the faster the healing times, the less time you spend in a hospital bed and not out living your life.

Surgeons are clamoring for this technology. For smaller laparoscopic instruments with broader angle and higher resolution views. For the ability to do more surgical procedures with smaller cuts and less bleeding.

Finally, we can outsource surgery!

[Anonymous Coward]

We can now outsource surgery to India as well? "Oh, hold on, my internet connection got laggy. Oh, sorry, well, ya can't sue for malpractice from another country, can ya! "

Re:Red Camera not really 4K

[Radagast]

The Red One at 4k is about 3.2k resolution optically, if you test it with a resolution chart.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that that's similar to the resolution you get with video cameras with 2/3" optics and a prism. Video cameras are 1920x1080 at the most (many formats are less horizontally), and prism alignment is never perfect, but even if it were, you'd never get more than 1920 lines horizontally, which is far less than the Red One's 3.2k, or even the 2.8k you claim. Besides, they're claiming "4X HD", which would mean 3840 pixels horizontally, and 3.2k is quite close to that.

Also, I'd generally be skeptical of anything "scientifically proven by Kodak". There are certainly very smart people working on Imaging Science for Kodak, but there's a tiny bit of vested interest in making digital look worse than film here. Hell, if you go to the website for Kodak motion picture products, more than half the front page real estate consists of ads for why film is still better, digital has lots of problems, film is the standard for professionals, etc. I think Kodak doth protest too much...