A novel laser angioplasty guided hollow fiber using mid-infrared laser

摘要

We have proposed selective removal of cholesterol ester by infrared laser of wavelength with 5.75 μm irradiation; the wavelength of 5.75 μm correspond with the ester bond C=O stretching vibration. The flexible laser guiding line and a compact light source are required for our proposal. We used a compact mid-infrared tunable laser by difference frequency generation; DFG laser was developed for substitute light source of free electron laser. In the present work, first, we have developed hollow optical fiber with a diamond lens-tip to deliver DFG laser in the blood vessel and evaluated the transmission of DFG laser from 5.5 μm to 7.5 μm. The transmission of 5.75 μm is about 65%, the DFG beam was focused on the tip of fiber by diamond lens-tip. Secondly, we performed the selective removal experiment of cholesterol ester using the hollow optical fiber with diamond lens-tip and DFG laser. The sample used a two layer model, cholesterol oleate and gelatin. The cholesterol oleate was decomposed by 5.75 μm DFG irradiation with 3.8 W/cm~2.