ULTRAFAST LASERS FEATURE
to do a cut, and that has no implications,’ he said. ‘Or you may want some heat for cauterisation, if you’re cutting an area that has blood vessels. ‘And of course, ultrafast lasers are more expensive, so if you don’t need to use them, then you wouldn’t.’ Internal surgery also needs fibres to
deliver the light, which is more complex and expensive with ultrashort pulse lasers, Chui added. French femtosecond laser maker Amplitude is another supplier to ophthalmic surgery instrument producers. François Guillot, segment line manager for ophthalmology, said: ‘The main benefit lies in the fact that many medical procedures can simply not be done without femto.’ Antoine Courjaud, Amplitude’s product line manager, explained that there is
www.electrooptics.com | @electrooptics
“With femtosecond laser surgery the process speed is relatively slow and is impractical for appreciable tissue removal”
an unmet need in glaucoma that such products may help resolve. ‘Ultrafast lasers allow a new generation of secondary sources that can compete with the standard sources in different fields, from x-ray radiography and therapy to proton therapy,’ he said. Proton therapy allows for high-
energy beams to be targeted at, and kill cancerous tissue, more precisely than x-ray radiotherapy is able to.
Amplitude sells ytterbium femtosecond
lasers into industries including ophthalmology. It also has an established titanium-doped sapphire ultrafast laser portfolio, which can reach petawatt levels, with modest peak power for micromachining and surgery applications. It has also introduced a modular portfolio called Magma that provides high peak power up to terawatt levels, as well as high average power, up to 1kW. Amplitude supplied a femtosecond titanium-doped sapphire laser with nearly a petawatt peak power to Helmholtz- Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) in Germany to research proton therapy. The approach needs high power lasers that accelerate electrons, firing them into a plasma, where the electrons’ energy transfers to protons. The HZDR system is
g March 2021 Electro Optics 21
Shutterstock
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50
