Abstract

We propose sealing techniques for medical hollow fibers to protect the inner surface of fibers from debris or water that scatters from targets. First, hollow fibers are sealed with a film of polymer that is easily formed by use of a dipping technique. The transmission loss of 20-µm-thick sealing film was 0.2 dB for Er:YAG laser light, and the maximum energy that is available for the film was 180 mJ. Second, a sealed glass cap was applied to the output end of hollow fiber. The silica-glass cap with a wall thickness of 400 µm shows a transmission loss of 0.5 dB and was not damaged by radiation of 400-mJ energy pulses.

© 2002 Optical Society of America

Flexible small-bore hollow fibers with an inner polymer coating

Yukio Abe, Yi-Wei Shi, Yuji Matsuura, and Mitsunobu Miyagi
Opt. Lett. 25(3) 150-152 (2000)

Characteristics of calculus fragmentation with Er:YAG laser light emitted by an infrared hollow optical fiber with various sealing caps

Katsumasa Iwai, Yi-Wei Shi, Yuji Matsuura, Mitsunobu Miyagi, Seichi Saito, and Youichi Arai
Appl. Opt. 44(16) 3266-3270 (2005)

Penetration of high-intensity Er:YAG laser light emitted by IR hollow optical fibers with sealing caps in water

Katsumasa Iwai, Yi-Wei Shi, Masashi Endo, Kentaro Ito, Yuji Matsuura, Mitsunobu Miyagi, and Helena Jelinkova
Appl. Opt. 43(12) 2568-2571 (2004)

Erbium:YAG laser lithotripsy by use of a flexible hollow waveguide with an end-scaling cap

Katsumasa Iwai, Yi-Wei Shi, Koh Nito, Yuji Matsuura, Takao Kasai, Mitsunobu Miyagi, Seichi Saito, Youichi Arai, Naomasa Ioritani, Yoshihide Okagami, Michal Nemec, Jan Sulc, Helena Jelinkova, Miroslav Zavoral, Oto Kohler, and Pavel Drlik
Appl. Opt. 42(13) 2431-2435 (2003)

Hollow fibers for delivery of harmonic pulses of Q-switched Nd:YAG lasers

Yuji Matsuura, Goro Takada, Takashi Yamamoto, Yi-Wei Shi, and Mitsunobu Miyagi
Appl. Opt. 41(3) 442-445 (2002)