Of Dollars and Values

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Thu, 11/19/2009 - 19:00 -- Nick Dager

The world’s exhibitors are in the process of spending close to $10 billion to transform their theatres from film to digital. One of the goals of this transformation is to enable exhibitors to offer their patrons the opportunity to see movies in clean crisp 3D. And while I share the same passion that many of you do for movies of all kinds and I want the movie business to flourish and grow I also believe strongly that there are more important applications for this technology than just having the ability to show Shrek Forever After in 3D.  Someday soon as was demonstrated at the recent annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine digital cinema technology may be used to save lives. Steven F. Palter MD an obstetrician gynecologist reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist performed the world's first 4K super high-definition laparoscopy at Syosset Hospital part of the North Shore-LIJ Health System and presented images from that surgery at the 65th annual meeting of the ASRM at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. The images are the sharpest most detail-rich and color-correct endoscopic images ever created anywhere Palter says. There is not a more accurate view inside the human body. Produced in conjunction with the Red Digital Cinema Camera Company Sony Electronics and the University of Southern California Cinema Arts School the diagnostic images were presented in a specially built digital theater with a projector designed to run ultra-HD movies in high-end movie theatres.  It's a prime example of how Hollywood film technology can be used to transform medicine by enabling doctors to see more accurately inside the body to study and treat disease Palter says. Through the use of this digital technology Hollywood is moving from observation to immersion – you're not just watching something you are there says Palter medical and scientific director of Gold Coast IVF in Syosset New York who presented the plenary presentation Film and Medicine: The Technological Transformation of Medicine.  In this session we showed how tomorrow's film technology can apply to laparoscopic surgery which is all performed using video techniques. According to Palter during the presentation the 3 500 reproductive medicine specialists in attendance were able to visualize the surgery as if they were standing in the operating room. However by combining unprecedented resolution and magnification the surgical images were beyond what a surgeon would see in traditional surgery.  The progress from regular surgical film technology is like comparing sitting in an HD home theater to watching a video on a cell phone says Palter. Doctor Palter's research and vision of surgery's technological future opened the eyes and minds of the audience to fantastic treatments beyond what can be done today says R. Dale McClure MD president of ASRM.   The session also included a projection of the largest HD three-dimensional surgical images ever. These images were enabled by converting Sony's 4K and 3D theatrical systems to show medical footage of what Palter has called futurevision.  To obtain the images Palter and researchers from USC Cinema Arts created a method to attach the Red One 4K camera to a laparoscope. Offhollywood a movie production company converted these images into a 4K digital cinema movie that was projected on Sony SRX-R220 projectors. Dr. Palter has been honored for his prize-winning work on the development of autofluorescent endoscopy.  He frequently shares his vision for the impact of future technology on medicine via his blog www.docinthemachine.com.