Ablation of Subsurface Tumors Using 1552 nm Ultra-Short Pulse Laser

Over last two decades lasers have been used for the treatment of subsurface tumors. Various techniques such as Laser-induced Hyperthermia, Laser Interstitial Thermal Therapy (LITT), and Laser Immunotherapy have been developed for the successful ablation of subsurface tumors by different researchers. All these techniques use photo-thermal mechanism for tumor ablation by delivering thermal energy at the tumor site. In all these existing techniques, either continuous wave (CW) or long pulse laser source has been used, which often produces larger heat affected zone as compared to that produced by short pulse laser. Moreover, the delivery of laser beam at the target site is achieved through fiber optic probes which often require perforation of the skin. These drawbacks can be eliminated if a converging laser beam from a short pulse laser source is directly focused at the subsurface location to ablate the tumor.