ELAN is a new method for treating atherosclerotic vessels. Its purpose is to restore wall flexibility by removing arterial wall tissue from the outer arterial layer. This leads to expansion of the narrowed vessel resulting in increased blood flow. We present results of treatment of arteries in vitro. Tissue removal was done by excimer-laser ablation using ns-pulses of 193nm wavelength. We also discuss therapy control. OCT images and light diffusion measurements are presented.
ELAN is a new method for treating atherosclerotic vessels. Its purpose is to restore wall flexibility by removing arterial wall tissue from the outer arterial layer. This leads to expansion of the narrowed vessel resulting in increased blood flow. We generated cuts in dissected arteries of sheep and pigs by photo-ablation with an ArF-Excimer Laser operating at a wavelength of 193 nm. During the cutting process the vessel diameter was monitored by measuring the running time of the laser induced pressure transients with a pressure transducer lying under the artery. A nearly linear increase of the diameter dependent on the residual wall thickness was found with a maximum increase of vessel diameter about 10%. We also observed that the arterial wall maintains stable to very small residual wall thicknesses i.e. deep cutting. To support the experiments and to test different geometries of tissue removal we performed FEM-Analysis. We simulated vessel deformation and the total strain depending on the depth, width and number of cuts in the outer artieral wall. We also found a significant increase of the "lumen" in a model with atherosclerotic shape obtained from a histological section.
Due to the low energy threshold of photodisruption with fs laser pulses, thermal and mechanical side effects are limited to the sub μm range. The neglection of side effects enables the use of ultrashort laser pulses in a broad field of medical applications. Moreover, the interaction process based on nonlinear absorption offers the opportunity to process transparent tissue three dimensionally inside the bulk.
We demonstrate the feasibility of surgical procedures in different fields of medical interest: In ophthalmology intrastromal cutting and preparing of corneal flaps for refractive surgery in living animals is presented. Besides, the very low mechanical side effects enables the use of fs-laser in otoralyngology to treat ocecular bones. Moreover, the precise cutting quality can be used in fields of cardiovascular surgery for the treatment of arteriosclerosis as well as in dentistry to remove caries from dental hard tissue.
Ultrafast lasers have become a promising tool for micromachining and extremely precise ablation of all kinds of materials. Due to the low energy threshold, thermal and mechanical side effects are limited to the bu micrometers range. The neglection of side effects enables the use of ultrashort laser pulses in a broad field of medical applications. Moreover, the interaction process based on nonlinear absorption offers the opportunity to process transparent tissue three dimensionally inside the bulk. We demonstrate the feasibility of surgical procedures in different fields of medical interest: in ophthalmology intrastromal cutting and preparing of cornael flaps for refractive surgery in living animals is presented. Besides, the very low mechanical side effects enables the use of fs- laser in otoralyngology to treat ocecular bones. Moreover, the precise cutting quality can be used in fields of cardiovascular surgery for the treatment of arteriosklerosis as well as in dentistry to remove caries from dental hard tissue.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.