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Tissue ablation by a free-electron laser tuned to the amide II band
- Glenn Edwards1,4,
- Regan Logan2,
- Michael Copeland3,
- Lou Reinisch4,1,
- Jeffrey Davidson5,
- Bruce Johnson1,
- Robert Maciunas4,
- Marcus Mendenhall1,
- Robert Ossoff4,
- Jerri Tribble1,
- Jay Werkhaven4 &
- …
- Denis O'Day2
Naturevolume 371, pages416–419 (1994)Cite this article
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Abstract
EFFORTS to ablate soft tissue with conventional lasers have been limited by collateral damage and by concern over potential photochemical effects1–5. Motivated by the thermal-confinement model6, past infrared investigations targeted the OH-stretch mode of water with fast pulses from lasers emitting near 3,000 nm (refs 1,7–9). What does a free-electron laser offer for the investigation of tissue ablation? Operating at non-photochemical single-photon energies, these infrared sources can produce trains of picosecond pulses tunable to the vibrational modes of proteins, lipids and/or water. We report here that targeting free-electron laser radiation to the amide II band of proteins leads to tissue ablation characterized by minimal collateral damage while maintaining a substantial ablation rate. To account for these observations we propose a novel ablation mechanism based on compromising tissue through resonant denaturation of structural proteins.
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Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, 37235, USA
Glenn Edwards, Lou Reinisch, Bruce Johnson, Marcus Mendenhall & Jerri Tribble
Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences,
Regan Logan & Denis O'Day
Neurosurgery,
Michael Copeland
Otolaryngology,
Glenn Edwards, Lou Reinisch, Robert Maciunas, Robert Ossoff & Jay Werkhaven
Pathology, Vanderbilt University Medical School, Nashville, Tennessee, 37232, USA
Jeffrey Davidson
- Glenn Edwards
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- Regan Logan
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- Michael Copeland
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- Lou Reinisch
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- Jeffrey Davidson
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- Bruce Johnson
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- Robert Maciunas
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- Marcus Mendenhall
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- Robert Ossoff
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- Jerri Tribble
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- Jay Werkhaven
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- Denis O'Day
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Edwards, G., Logan, R., Copeland, M.et al. Tissue ablation by a free-electron laser tuned to the amide II band.Nature371, 416–419 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1038/371416a0
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