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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Edwards, G., Logan, R., Copeland, M. et al. Tissue ablation by a free-electron laser tuned to the amide II band. Nature 371, 416–419 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1038/371416a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/371416a0
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