Damage thresholds in skin and cornea using tunable ultrafast lasers

The market for ultrafast lasers (picosecond and femtosecond laser pulses) is rapidly expanding and recent forecasts estimate a total market of over $1.4 billion USD by 2019. Ultrafast lasers have many applications in biomedicine, telecommunications, defense, materials processing, and general research. Despite the growing adoption of ultrafast laser technology, current safety standards (ANSI Z136.1-2014) do not include maximum permissible exposure (MPE) values for skin using laser applications with pulse durations less than one nanosecond. Moreover, the wavelength dependence of ultrafast laser exposure in the mid-infrared region of the spectrum has not been explored. Increasing prevalence of ultrafast lasers will likely lead to an increase in the number of adverse events from accidental exposures.Our objective was to use a tunable femtosecond regenerative amplifier and an optical parametric amplifier (Spectra-Physics, Irvine, CA) to investigate laser damage characteristics and exposure thresholds for tissu...