Femtosecond laser surgery in the ablation cooling regime for improved depth and speed

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This project will study the physical effects of ultra-fast lasers operating in the 'ablation-cool' regime, where the short laser pulses operate at a very high pulse rep-rate so that the pulses occur before the heat is dissipated in the tissue. This can overcome the difficulties that result from laser-cutting tissue at the normal low rep-rates. The advantages include enhanced efficiency of cutting, improved removal-rates of products material, use of lower powers, and allowing deeper penetration depths. This will have a pronounced impact on the operation in systems where fine-tuning of accuracy of surgery, deep tissue penetration, and product removal are critical, such as vocal cords lesions or spine surgeries.The project utilizes a burst-mode femtosecond laser system that would deliver pulses at nearly 1.5 GHz rate leading to high energy deposited into the target area. The investigators hypothesize that such a burst mode GHz train of pulses would result in a deeper sub-surface ablation. The PIs further predict that such a pulse train will lead to an order-of-magnitude increase in ablation rates compared to conventional kHz repetition rate femtosecond lasers, in addition to avoiding thermal side effects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.