Abstract
The Laser Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is developing 1 the technology and applications for high average power, sub-psec, solid state lasers. In this instance, we will describe our latest efforts to develop some of this technology into useful medical devices. The short pulse laser removes tissue through pure photoablation, which affords a means to carefully control excision and collateral damage. We have observed removal rates of order 1 micron/pulse with only a weak dependence on tissue color. Tissue heating and collateral damage are also significantly minimized when using such short pulse interactions thus providing an important opportunity to develop a microsurgery device with unprecedented accuracy for excision. We will describe some of the medical applications such as dental drilling, nerve resection and delicate spinal surgery. We will also discuss the current technology hurdles which must be overcome in order to successfully deploy such lasers within the Health Care industry.
© 1999 Optical Society of America
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