Image Morphing

Morphing is a very helpful software tool. You can use the morphing tool on my website as a guide towards what you desire. It is also helpful by allowing you to visually 'try out' changes before your consultation. 

Morphing (Photo alteration) can also be a valuable adjunct when you attend for your consultation. Many patients that come to see me for rhinoplasty surgery request image morphing to assist in demonstrating what the post-operative appearance could look like . In this instance it can be used as a valuable communication and learning tool. After exploring your aims and carrying out an examination I take photographs and alter them to what I think the aim of surgery is and also to what I estimate can be reasonably acheived. At times more dramatic changes than I have shown are asked for. The caution I give is that morphing a photograph on the computer is not the same as surgery to the nose. Remember that it is much easier to draw a line on the computer or move pixels around than carrying out real surgery, which is far more complicated. What exists on the computer monitor as a result of a software program therefore cannot be used by anyone to guarantee surgical results.    

I mainly use morphing for the following reasons:

1. To make sure the patient and the surgeon are on the same page in terms of what is desired and what is possible. It gives me important feedback about what you like.
2. The images created are simulations that can be very helpful in educating individual patients about their particular issues.
3. The photos help reduce the uncertainty of making changes, for example 'making the tip smaller' or 'shortening the nose'.
4. It can allow us to look at different options and also evaluate the effect of 'degrees of change'. More importantly, it can help to show how excessive surgery is often not favourable, and to demonstrate the limitations of rhinoplasty 
5. To help demonstrate what would work and what would not work. 
6. To help plan surgery by way of having a "visual" conversation about any proposed changes in the nose shape through surgery.

In summary, morphing is mainly used to better the understanding between patient and surgeon and this understanding is of course an important step towards achieving the desired result.