Using computer to assess results.

• Position: Plastic surgery results

Many plastic surgeons utilize before kind after photographs to show potential new patients the results that previous subjects had experienced. However, subtle changes are difficult to discern in photographs and, in dramatic transformations after surgery, the eye completely may miss some subtle alterations in appearance.

Gregory Lovaas, director of the hospital unit in the Division of Plastic Surgery at the Miami Children's Hospital, employs a technique that is far more technologically sophisticated. He has gone beyond the uses even of computer imaging, which shows patients how they might look after plastic surgery, by tailoring computer innovation that was made popular by the Michael Jackson "Black or White" video and the 1992 movie "Terminator 2."

"Morphing" - the process of seamlessly shifting one image to another by computer - now is widely available to doctors in pre-programmed software. "With morphing, the computer calculates changes in the...