Subsurface femtosecond tissue alteration: Selectively photobleaching macular degeneration pigments in near retinal contact

Zakhariya Manevitch, Aaron Lewis*, Carol Levy, Evelyne Zeira, Eyal Banin, Alexandra Manevitch, Artium Khatchatouriants, Jacob Pe'Er, Eithan Galun, Itzhak Hemo

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper uses advances in the ultrafast manipulation of light to address a general need in medicine for a clinical approach that can provide a solution to a variety of disorders requiring subsurface tissue manipulation with ultralow collateral damage. Examples are age-related macular degeneration (AMD), fungal infections, tumors surrounded by overlying tissue, cataracts, etc. Although lasers have revolutionized the use of light in clinical settings, most lasers employed in medicine cannot address such problems of depth-selective tissue manipulation. This arises from the fact that they are mostly based on one photon based laser tissue interactions that provide a cone of excitation where the energy density is sufficiently high to excite heat or fluorescence in the entire cone. Thus, it is difficult to excite a specific depth of a tissue without affecting the overlying surface. However, the advent of femtosecond (fs) lasers has caused a revolution in multiphoton microscopy (Zipfel et al. Nat. Biotechnol.2003, 21, 1369 - 1377; Denk et al. Science1990, 248, 73 - 76) and fabrication (Kawata et al. Nature2001, 412, 697 - 698). With such lasers, the photon energy density is only high enough for multiphoton processes in the focal volume, and this opens a new direction to address subsurface tissue manipulation. Here we show in an AMD animal model, Ccr2 KO knockout mutant mice, noninvasive, selective fs two-photon photobleaching of pigments associated with AMD that accumulate under and in ultraclose proximity to the overlying retina. Pathological evidence is presented that indicates the lack of collateral damage to the overlying retina or other surrounding tissue.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)6945-6951
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Physical Chemistry B
Volume116
Issue number23
DOIs
StatePublished - 14 Jun 2012

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Subsurface femtosecond tissue alteration: Selectively photobleaching macular degeneration pigments in near retinal contact'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this