First of all, I found this study that compares the cross-sectional area of a control group with an ENS group. I found this interesting so I do the same for myself, and here are the results.
We can see that there is no doubt that my nasal cavity (in blue) is more empty than the control group. The information about the control group is pulled from the study cited at the beginning of this article.
At a distance of 20 mm from the nostrils, my nasal cavity is more empty than the control group but not too much. But after 40 mm the value explodes and it reaches up to 2.5 times the control value at a distance of 50 mm to the nostrils. So clearly I need more volume from 40mm to 70mm.
I think it is better to have a stable cross-sectional area all along the nasal cavity even if a little higher than normal rather than reaching the normal value at the beginning of the nasal cavity and then leaving a big hole afterward. Of course, the ideal would be to be able to reach the value of the control group all along the nasal cavity.
I made a second graph that compares the cross-sectional area from the right and left nasal cavity in order to see the imbalance.
Here we can see that the area until 40 mm from the nostrils of the right nasal cavity is pretty stable thanks to my lateral wall implant. After this value, the area explodes and reaches more than 200 mm². Which is more than 2 fold the control group. I don't have the cross-sectional area data from the right and left nasal cavities of the control group, only the two together. But we can speculate that the nasal cavities of the control groups are balanced so about 100 mm² each. The left side is worse, it reaches almost 300 mm² at a distance of 50 mm, which is almost 3 times the control value! However, this is the side where I have almost 50% of the turbinate left, but it is also the side where I have never had an implant or injections.
However, although my left nasal cavity is emptier than the right, I don't feel that it is worse. First because on the left I still have 50% of the turbinate while on the right nothing. Thanks to the half of the turbinate still present on the left, the surface of the mucosa is not the same between the two nasal cavities. This is what we will see in this third graph.
We can therefore see that the perimeter of the mucosa is greater on the left than on the right. We are talking about perimeter here because these are slices in 2 dimensions but it reflects the value of the surface of the mucosa. So we can clearly see on the graph that the surface of the mucosa is higher on the left than on the right thanks to the remaining half of the turbinate. So although my left side is emptier than the right I don't feel it is worse.
Note that the larger the mucosa surface, the more blood vessels, TRPM8 sensors there are, and the larger the exchange surface between the air and the mucosa.
To conclude this article, I think that the cross-sectional area and the surface of the mucosa are interesting information that can help to know where to place an implant. And also it's I think interesting to quantify the lack of volume.