About This Webinar
In the last decade, lasers have become the tools of choice for next-generation tissue surgeries. Thanks to their unique properties, femtosecond lasers are currently considered for high-resolution bone tissue surgery, during which laser-induced thermal damages must be carefully avoided to improve healing quality and duration.
Laura Gemini presents a comprehensive study carried out to push forward the readiness of this technology by optimizing the process parameters together with the development of proper diagnostic tools. A maximization of the ablation rate on pork femur in the femtosecond regime was achieved within a process-upscaling approach by using industrial femtosecond laser sources. To precisely follow the temperature of the bone tissue during and after the laser processing, FLIR camera imaging and thermocouple sensors were employed to obtain the evolution of the temperature distribution on the tissue with respect to the variation of different process parameters, as well as the laser-induced chemical modifications.
The study's results show that femtosecond laser processing of bone tissue in a pressured-water spray environment allows reaching temperatures below the protein denaturation temperature of the bone. Additionally, Gemini explains how laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) analyses connected laser-induced chemical modifications of the tissue with its temperature and the applied processing parameters. Results of this part of the study show that LIBS is a reliable and useful technique for real-time monitoring of bone condition during laser ablation and could be implemented as such in the frame of eventual automation of bone surgeries by femtosecond laser processing.
***This presentation premiered during the 2021
BioPhotonics Conference. For more information on Photonics Media conferences, visit
events.photonics.com.
About the presenter:
Laura Gemini, Ph.D., has 10 years of experience in the field of photonics, with a focus on ultrafast laser processing. During her doctoral studies carried out between Prague and Japan, she developed a strong understanding of ultrafast laser materials interaction for applications in surface functionalization. To enrich her academic background, she joined the French technological center ALPhANOV in 2015, where she currently manages the group for nano-scale laser processing of transparent materials and health applications. She was selected this year as co-chair of the SPIE conference Laser Applications in Microelectronic and Optoelectronic Manufacturing (LAMOM) XXVII.