A simple method to animate suture techniques

Abstract

A variety of visual resources exist to illustrate suture techniques in dermatologic surgery, but most of these resources consist of static graphics and images. While a series of illustrations may be helpful to conceptualize techniques, the true motions and movements that are essential to correctly implementing them are not always adequately represented. Animations may solve this problem, but they are often made by animators with no medical or surgical experience and therefore may lack the subtleties to correctly understand the technique. We present a method that is both simple and efficient to create a variety of suture animations, thereby allowing surgeons, fellows, residents, and students with minimal to no animation experience to easily animate desired techniques for learning purposes. While these methods may be expanded to other areas of dermatologic surgery, we focus only on suturing techniques.