Soft tissue removal by the 193 nm excimer laser in a strongly absorbing liquid environment

Daniel Palanker, Itzhak Hemo, Igor Turovets, Aaron Lewis

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

The 193 nm excimer laser delivered through special tips into biological liquid environments was applied to two different fields of microsurgery and two mechanisms of tissue ablation were found to be operative. In vitreoretinal surgical applications, where the tip exit diameter was about 250 jim, the effective cutting regime of retina and vitreoretinal membranes occurred at energy fluences of about 250-350 mJ/cm2/pulse with a corresponding cutting depth of 50-150 jim/pulse. Gas bubbles, formed at the tip exit when it touched the tissue during irradiation, seem to be the driving force underlying the cutting process. This enabled us to achieve a much deeper cut in tissue then a micron-sized laser penetration depth. The system was applied to bovine and rabbit retina and rabbit vitreoretinal membranes and it was found that such tissue removal is fast enough for real vitreoretinal applications and the cut depth control is still good enough for this microsurgery. In the application of this system to drilling of 4-8 pm diameter holes in the zona pellucida of oocytes the optimal energy fluence is about 40 mJkm2/pulse with an ablation depth of about 2 xm/pulse. In this case no bubbles are formed and the process seems to be a non-explosive photodissociation of the tissue with subsequent slow dissolution of the products. This mechanism, in contrast to the vitreoretinal tissue removal, was found to be very selective to the type of material being ablated. This process was studied on a model of 20% gelatin gel, which is very close to the ablation properties of the zona pellucida.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1342
Pages (from-to)460-469
Number of pages10
JournalProceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Volume2134
DOIs
StatePublished - 17 Aug 1994
Externally publishedYes
EventLaser-Tissue Interaction V; and Ultraviolet Radiation Hazards 1994 - Los Angeles, United States
Duration: 23 Jan 199429 Jan 1994

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 1994 Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering. All rights reserved.

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