People considering plastic surgery often arrive to their initial consultations armed with pictures of the celebrity body parts they aspire to emulate: Kate Middleton’s nose! Sofia Vergara’s breasts! Halle Berry’s chin! And doctors, aiming to manage expectations, are usually prepared with their own photos of successful results from surgeries they’ve performed.
These pictures can be a helpful but imprecise tool when it comes to schooling potential patients on the kinds of results they can realistically expect to achieve. The big problem with this method? None of those photographs — neither the red carpet snaps patients rip from magazines nor the post-op photos taken in the surgeon’s office — are of the patient herself.
This is exactly the problem a relatively new tool called the VECTRA XT 3D Imaging System attempts to solve. The device, which resembles a space-age teleportation machine, creates hyperrealistic 3D models of patients’ bodies. A person simply stands in front of the tool, which takes six 2D photographs with six cameras simultaneously. The system also takes precise measurements — including of any asymmetries — to almost instantly generate a 3D model of the body. The resulting image is so high-definition, a doctor can see every freckle and pore if he or she zooms in.