Ultrashort laser pulses for precision ablation of cancerous tissue (Conference Presentation)

The successful laser ablation of clinically relevant tissue models by means of ultrashort laser pulses is presented. This is a potential alternative to overcoming limitations of conventional tumour-surgery tools in terms of precision and thermal damage. The correlation of high-speed imaging of both the ablation process and the resulting plume dynamics with a histopathological analysis of the post-process tissue morphology enables the optimisation of the tissue removal rate whilst avoiding adverse cavitation effects. This facilitates minimal collateral thermal damage. Effective tissue removal is presented for the epithelial laser ablation of colonic tissue with the translation of this process towards infiltrating brain and head and neck cancer surgery further discussed.