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09/30/2006 04:44:49 AM · #1 |
i am a surgeon and essentially take intra-operative photos and pictures of resected specimens.
I was using an old 3.2 megapixel panasonic camera, but now would like to upgrade.i wanted to know which type ( resolution/ megapixel) is ideal for medical photography.
is there any specific model anyone can suggest.
i haven't decided a budget but under $500 would be fine.
most of the photos would be used for presentation and publications.
Also since most publications, (i presume) require a minimum of 150 x 150 dpi resolution what is the minimum specification that i can go for?i also would be using this for taking family picture.
your advice would be of great help
thanks
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09/30/2006 05:15:57 AM · #2 |
I'm a first year med student at UCLA, probably going in to surgery. I'm kinda wondering the same thing. How do you take your pictures currently without breaking sterile field? Or does someone else take them? There are lots of good point and shoot cameras (5+ megapixel) out there that would probably have plently of resolution for publication, something like the Sony DSC-T10 ($399). That's 7.2MP and would be plently.
Andrew |
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09/30/2006 05:30:13 AM · #3 |
Hi, i clean operating theatres and am a second year degree student in photgraphy. I've only been working there a month so haven't taken a medical shot yet, but the surgeons take photos and they just use sterile wipes on there cameras before and after they shoot.
I would reckomend getting as high a pixel camera as you can afford as you will be able to zoom in more when viewing your images on your computer.
James
Message edited by author 2006-09-30 05:32:16. |
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09/30/2006 05:30:14 AM · #4 |
hi andrew,
thanks for your help
i generally ask someone else to take the pictures for me and most of the time its my anesthetist who helps me out or the OT tech.
what i also need is a camera which takes good pictures under OR lights.
what happens most of the time is that if you use the flash its too bright and if you don't its too dark.
another problem i found was that due to the blood in the operative field the pictures would become reddish. |
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09/30/2006 07:23:24 PM · #5 |
If you don't want to use flash, you should look at camera with anti-shake and a high ISO setting. The camera that i suggested does have anti-shake and a 800iso setting so you probably would be able to take good photos with just the OR lights and still have more than enough resolution for publishing.
Andrew |
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09/30/2006 09:58:22 PM · #6 |
thanks andrew
is this camera an SLR? if not will a DSLR be of any extra help?
or will it be beyond my budget?
I wanted to ask james since he is into photgraphy , any idea how you can reduce the reddish hue of the op field?
thanks |
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09/30/2006 10:12:44 PM · #7 |
Originally posted by sanjoymandal:
thanks andrew
is this camera an SLR? if not will a DSLR be of any extra help?
or will it be beyond my budget?
I wanted to ask james since he is into photgraphy , any idea how you can reduce the reddish hue of the op field?
thanks |
you should take white balence off a grey card - it could be very well that the lights in it op'room could be giving you a reddish hue .. |
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10/01/2006 11:32:21 AM · #8 |
Well, I may be a little out of my league here as I'm no surgeon, but camerawise, may I suggest the Fuji Finepix F30
There are a few reasons.
#1 You won't need much in the way of extra light with those operating lights, but you will want some freedom to go without flash - The ISO performance of this camera is special and unrivalled (read the review). I wouldn't personally push it to ISO 800, but I'd probably stick it at ISO 400 and leave it there.
#2 It's small and compact.
#3 It has a nice LCD screen to compose pictures on with anti-glare (it's not perfect, but probably a great help with those big spotlights).
#4 I think it's fairly cheap ($340 US)
#5 can do 640x480 at 30fps for video (large files though... eep)
#6 Good battery life for those EPIC operations
As a bit of a bummer, here are the downsides:
#1 Macro distance is 5CM... not really a huge deal honestly. You shouldn't get much closer than that anyhow with the 'sterile field'...
#2 Unfortunately, the camera uses tiny XD cards. You can still get 1GB and maybe 2GB cards, but what a pain in the butt - especially if you want to do video...
#3 The dingbats running the show at Fujifilm decided not to include a Manual mode, so you can only control either the aperture or the shutter speed... Again, probably not a huge deal... You should be OK with the basic settings and maybe a bit of getting used to it with the exposure compensation if things are too dull...
#4 The doofuses (doofi?) at Fujifilm also decided not to include a manual white balance. This isn't as bad as it sounds though. Your operating lights are probably all the same color temperature, so all you really need to do is set a standard by choosing a white balance preset that looks good. How do you choose? Before getting someone on the table, set up all the lights and a peice of white paper (or better yet a grey card... the white paper will make your camera underexpose the shot and make everything look all grey... if you need the reason for that clarified, PM me).
I'm guessing that your lights are a little yellow, so for that camera, you will probably be OK with Incandescent or Fluorescent (Warm White).
That will give you CONSISTENT and fairly accurate color in the pictures.
There is no other way to avoid odd color casts. Set your white balance to the same setting every time (NOT AUTO) and you will get consistent results under the same lighting.
I'm going to hazard a guess that your operating chamber has fluorescents on the top and variable strength spot lighting for close-up work like at my dentists office. This may cause conflicts in color temperature which are unfortunately unavoidable. Consistent results is the best that can be offered.
Taking white balance via a grey card is specific to cameras with a custom white balance feature. I believe that the above recommendations will be sufficient to get around that.
Finally, I will add that your requirement of 150x150DPI is not a relevant concern for this issue.
DPI (in this context) is related ONLY to the OUTPUT IMAGE as in what you print the picture on... It has nothing to do with the camera or the number of pixels that the camera has. It only has to do with how many pixels you want to print in a certain area.
Again, for more clarification, feel free to PM me. |
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10/01/2006 12:52:03 PM · #9 |
You might consider the Canon S3 IS -- it has a lot of versatility which could come in handy in the medical/OR setting:
-12x zoom (36-420mm equivalent)
-Macro and Super-Macro modes (focuses to 0")
-Tilt-swivel LCD (allows you to shoot over the surgeon's shoulder and still see what you're doing, and shoot macros at odd angles)
-Hi-ISO settings available
-Custom WB/manual settings available
-Fixed lens (minimizes sterilization problems)
-One-button to go into movie mode -- up to eight minutes at 640x480x30fps with stereo sound in a sigle clip with adequate storage; you can zoom during shooting and snap stills (may get video dropout with the still shot
-Built-in time-lapse mode
-Uses standard AA batteries and SD cards |
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10/01/2006 01:13:27 PM · #10 |
Well I've been a surgical phisician assistant and a perfusionist for 7 years and I've been in more than 3000 surgeries (cardiac and vascular) in this time.
I've done a lot of photos for myself and for the surgeons I've work with, so let me give you some of my experience. I'll direct my comments per issue.
MEGAPIXEL COUNT: Dispite what some people said here the pixel count it's not that inportant in this case, unless you need to do a poster and you want to use a photo as a background. Otherwise I've made a lot of photos with a Fuji S5000 witch is 3 MP and it served us all very well. So beetwen 3 and 6 MP from a prosumer camera will be enough for this kind of use. There are much more important issues than this.
ISO: if you can go to ISO 200 or 400 withough having much noise you'll be ok. With most OR lights pointed to your point of interest you can have at f4 or f5.6 a shutter speed above 1/200. Those lights are really powerfull if you direct them to a specific place. You're not so lucky if you need a picture of a hole OR. So not a big deal with iso or shutter seed for general use. If you use a head light be shure if it's not much more strong than the ceilling lights or you must keep the light off the subject when shooting. A subject of greather importance is where and how you meter the light.
WORKING DISTANCE: probably this is the most important issue for choosing your camera. You need to know two things: first at waht distance will the camera be held, and second what is the minimum focus distance for the camera. Let me explain this better. If you always ask the anestesiologist to take the photos you don't need to buy a camera that as a macro hability and a minimum focus distance of 5 cm for example. You will never use it. In this case you need a camera that can focus at 30 or 4 cm but that can be zoomed in for getting the image you want. But for instance if you or your scrubbing nurse is shooting and you are on top of the subject, let's say 10 cm, you might want to check if the camera ca focus at that distance.
I've taken photos in OR from the head of the patient and with the front of the lens at 40 cm form the subject and I've taken photos after scrubbing and getting in to the steril cloth holding the camera real close to the steril field. So it depends in what you are doing.
Surgical photograph (may be disturbing to some viewers)
For example the above image was taken with a d70 with the 70-300mm at fumm 300mm zoomed in. I was about 2 metter from the subject in a latter. Just to know this is an Y anastomoses for a doble bypass graft and the image is inside the patient chest. At iso 400 the shuter speed was 1/400 for an apperture of f5.6. So you see hight iso is not that important because of the power of OR lights.
Message edited by ClubJuggle - Disturbing image warning. |
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10/01/2006 01:16:28 PM · #11 |
| Heh... I was even going to say, "I hope no one feels that it's necessary to post an example here." Now my wife will likely find me passed out at the sight of this... :) |
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10/02/2006 03:22:18 AM · #12 |
Thanks everybody for the advice
The F30 and the canon S3 IS seem to fit the bill and my budget.
But I am not too averse to the Nikon D series
Nuno your photo is great with good resolution. The anastomosis is well seen and the reddish hue is not there.
lot of food for thought
thanks again
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10/02/2006 04:48:38 AM · #13 |
I shoot the S2 IS, which is virtually identical to the S3 IS.
The noise performance kinda sucks at ISO 400. I never shoot anything more than ISO 200.
The Nikon plus the 70-300 lens adds a new dimension to the picture, namely the possibility of keeping the camera farther away, but I still picture the most common use of this type of camera being in fairly close proximity. To be totally honest, no big zoom camera has good ISO performance beyond ISO 200. There are two options that give extra weight to the idea of using a D70, and that is the use of RAW for color correction (if you want to publish the photos or something) and also the use of higher ISOs... I'd probably agree that beyond ISO 400 is probably not really important.
But shooting ISO 400 with the S3 IS will give you headaches.
Another thing that you might consider is purchasing a waterproof casing for the camera. It might set you back a bit, and I'm not sure about availability, but might get you a lot more freedom in the operating room, especially if you can just simply sanitize and sterilize the waterproof case.
As to color correction, I believe that this will be taken by the steps mentioned above for white balance. Actually, you could try to experiment with this with the camera you are already using. Using a preset white balance should stabilize things a lot. The auto white balance in the camera is easily fooled. |
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