Engineering the 'Ideal Breast' - Houston weather, traffic, news | FOX 26 | MyFoxHouston

You see them on runways, in catalogs, and at the beach. Public fascination with breast size and shape has fueled America's plastic surgery industry.

"I want to build the ideal breast. So what is the ideal breast?"

It's not a strange question coming from a plastic surgeon.

But Gary Horndeski is not your typical surgeon. Before he was a doctor, Horndeski was an aspiring electrical engineer, a math major with an intense interest in physics.

And when it comes to creating "the ideal breast," - well, this is how he sees it.

It's not the art of medicine," said Horndeski. "It's more engineering. It's human engineering."

Horndeski has engineered a new breast rejuvenation technique.

The procedure is not just cosmetic.

Hundreds of thousands of women struggle with oversized chests, and the painful medical issues that come along with them.

For them, its hard to imagine a reduction, lift and implant all in one.

"I was probably a size 38 triple D... or bigger," said Jana Reed.

Five years ago, Reed was a single mom, working in Horndeski's office.

Her large breasts made it hard to sleep. Her back, neck and head always hurt.

After years of watching her employer perform standard "wise method" breast reductions on others, she agreed to give his new technique a try.

"It took me a long time to have it done because the technique that was used back then, which is standard textbook reduction, I didn't like the results," said Reed. "The results were very unattractive, left lots of scarring and they didn't lift the breasts into the position where they are high. And that' s what attracted me to what Dr. Horndeski is doing."

"I am able to make a cone out of a patient's own breast tissue.," said Horndeski. "I'm also able to position the cone in the chest wall where ever I want. In addition to that, I have a technique that involves using straps, so I make basically an internal push-up bra."

The before and after pictures aren't very TV friendly, so we can't show you much in our video report.

But to give you an idea, the breast in one of the "before photos" look like they belong to an aging, more mature woman.

They don't.

They belong to a 20-year-old college student.

"Before I got my surgery, the bra I had was a (size) J," said Jordan West.

Now a size 36 C, West used Horndeski's new technique to get her back to the size she wore when she was in 6th grade.

"Just a T-shirt or a V-neck would look sexual on me because my chest was so large," she said.

"I use what they don't want, the skin that's hanging, the skin on the side, all the stuff they don't want, that they don't like, is what I use to make the cone."

The cone, as he calls it, is Horndeski's natural version of an implant.

By creating an incision, under the fold of the breast, the technique also eliminates visible vertical scarring along the breast.

Cosmetic improvement is what attracted 64-year-old Cheryl Waller.

"I often thought about it, but just waited and I'm glad I waited for the type of procedure that I did get," said Waller.

For these 3 women, a 4-hour procedure has been a life altering experience.

Reed says smaller breasts gave her the confidence to be more social. She started eating better, going out, met and married the man of her dreams.

"It's been this long and they're still exactly where they were," said Reed.

For West, surgery means she no longer has to buy bras in specialty stores, and can now join her friends on shopping sprees.

"For me emotionally, it was clothes," said West.

And for Waller, Horndeski's procedure fits in with her plan to use plastic surgery to slow the aging process.

"I'm ready to tell the whole world that you can't get any better than this," she said.

But for Horndeski, the 4-hour procedure is the result of 10 years of mathematically analyzing the human breast.

"They're probably not many plastic surgeons who are really engineering oriented," said Horndeski.

From a scratch sheet of paper full of letters, numbers, lines and arrows to the operating table and real life, it looks like problem solved.