Smart lasers for medical laser treatments

Summary form only given. There have in recent years been increasing efforts to incorporate intelligent feedback control systems into lasers used for medical treatments. The goal has been to achieve more selective energy delivery to targeted vs healthy tissue and more precise control of laser dosimetry. Achieving these goals should lead to better patient outcomes, as well as easier and/or faster treatments. A feedback control system for a medical treatment laser generally consists of four principal components: (1) a sensor which monitors tissue response to the treatment laser (or to an auxiliary excitation source), (2) signal conditioning/processing hardware which processes the signal to a useful format, (3) an analysis algorithm which interprets the processed data to assess tissue type or tissue state, e.g., temperature, induced stress, etc., and (4) an active beam control device which controls beam energy delivery in a responsive way.