Premium
Temperature response of biological materials to pulsed non‐ablative CO 2 laser irradiation
Author(s) -
Brugmans Marco J. P.,
Kemper Jim,
Gijsbers Geert H. M.,
van der Meulen Freerk W.,
van Gemert Martin J. C.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
lasers in surgery and medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.888
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1096-9101
pISSN - 0196-8092
DOI - 10.1002/lsm.1900110614
Subject(s) - irradiation , laser , ablative case , materials science , pulse (music) , radiation , optics , radiation therapy , medicine , physics , detector , nuclear physics
This paper presents surface temperature responses of various tissue phantoms and in vitro and in vivo biological materials in air to non‐ablative pulsed CO 2 laser irradiation, measured with a thermocamera. We studied cooling off behavior of the materials after a laser pulse, to come to an understanding of heat accumulation and related thermal damage during (super) pulsed CO 2 laser irradiation. The experiments show a very slow decay of temperatures in the longer time regime. This behavior is well predicted by a simple model for one‐dimensional heat flow that considers the CO 2 laser radiation as producing a heat flux on the material surface. The critical pulse repetition frequency for which temperature accumulation is sufficiently low is estimated at about 5 Hz. Although we have not investigated the ablative situation, our results suggest that very low pulse frequencies in microsurgical procedures may be recommended.