Small-size pulsed lasers in medical applications

The application of physics concepts to solve biological and medical problems are of growing interest. There are strong efforts to study the use of pulsed laser system in medical applications like dermatology, surgery, dental medicine and ophthalmology. Laser wavelengths cover a wide range from the ultraviolet to the far infrared. The most common radiation sources include all kind of lasers like solid-state lasers, semiconductor lasers and also gas discharge lasers. The important requirement on the choice of the type with regard to its wavelength is the biological response of the treated tissue. The presentation gives a short introduction about the principles of different pulsed laser systems for medical application. The following part of this presentation is devoted to discuss modulator design pulse shaping methods and applications of different laser systems mainly employed for ophthalmology. A lot of effort has gone into ophthalmology to adapt pulsed laser systems for applications like photo refractive ceractomy or LASIK for substituting glasses, retina coagulation and last but not least the cataract ablation as most common surgery.