Subject(s)
Arteriosclerosis/therapy , Blood Vessels , Blood , Lasers , Angioplasty, Balloon , Humans , Laser TherapyABSTRACT
A first attempt to describe (coronary) laser angioplasty is presented using simplified but standard optical and thermal modeling of tissue in interaction with a laser. Ablation behavior of blood thrombi and plaque has been approximated from numerical computations for various wavelengths representing the Ar, Nd-YAG, and CO2 lasers. The overall results, in terms of calculated depth of ablation versus laser irradiation time, show a relatively fast initial process followed by a very slow one. The analysis suggests that a sequence of laser pulse-catheter tip flushing should substantially increase the overall ablation velocity. The physics of threshold laser power and influence of laser beam diameter is discussed. A comparison between experimental results is made when possible. Suggestions for further test experiments are made.
Subject(s)
Coronary Disease/surgery , Laser Therapy , Humans , Mathematics , Models, BiologicalABSTRACT
Optical properties of blood vessel wall and plaque from human cadaver material are presented for the argon laser (514.5 nm), He-Ne laser (633 nm), and the Nd-YAG laser (1,060 nm) wavelengths. Measurements were performed with an integrating sphere arrangement and analyzed in terms of Kubelka-Munk absorption and scattering coefficients.
