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Smart Optical Fibers Could Save Lives

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the technology-smarter-than-general-public dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Lasers are now commonly used for surgery. With them, you can recover a better sense of vision. Or a tumor inside your body can be eliminated. But these laser light beams, which are currently enclosed inside optical fibers, can harm you if they escape from their enclosures. But now, according to Technology Review, MIT researchers have designed smart optical fibers which can monitor their status while the laser is doing its magic inside you and shut it down if a fiber wall is about to break. So far, the technology is only working in labs, but it could be used for medical applications in a few years."

4 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. More information by whitehatlurker · · Score: 5, Informative

    More information appears in a PDF linked off of Fink's bio page. Apparently they use tin in the coating as the conductor. When that melts, the circuit breaks.

    --
    .. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
  2. A little overstated... by stoneymonster · · Score: 5, Informative

    I work in the medical laser industry (as a software engineer, but I use the actual the devices all the time, and understand our hardware). We use a fiber laser. If the fiber were to break, the device would simply stop working.. because the fiber is clad in a metal armored jacket! I'm certain most delivery devices are similar. Part of the reason for this is you must maintain a minimum bend radius on the fiber, or it is very easy to exceed the total internal reflection constraints on it. The second thing is, our lasers have back reflection fault indicators, which also can go off if anything optically bad happens down the line. Anyone who knows of a medical device that has naked fiber being used to treat can feel free to correct me, but that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen for more reasons than the article states.

    1. Re:A little overstated... by mpoulton · · Score: 5, Informative

      Anyone who knows of a medical device that has naked fiber being used to treat can feel free to correct me, but that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen for more reasons than the article states.

      Most older general-purpose surgical lasers that I'm aware of use a naked fiber, and I do believe it is a disaster waiting to happen. I don't know about the new lasers coming on the market today, but I have worked with 80's and 90's vintage lasers still in service and they have no protection. For example, the Laserscope 800 is a 20W green (523nm) or 90W IR (1064nm) Q-switched CW YAG laser for general surgery. Its disposable delivery fiber is a 300 micron step-index core with no protection other than the bonded plastic jacket with a diameter of about 1mm. Cheap telecom fiber is better protected than this! The same system is used on the Trimedyne 1000 and the Lasersonics, both of which are 100 watt YAG lasers. I intentionally broke a fiber on my Trimedyne at full power, and was amazed by how dangerous it can be. The fiber can easily be kinked or broken by accident, which instantly results in a white-hot meltdown and separation at the point of damage. The broken end of the fiber then springs back and vaporizes or ignites whatever it flops against, potentially including nearby personnel. It also randomly radiates incomprehensible amounts of extremely dangerous invisible light in God knows what direction, likely frying the retinas of anyone foolish enough not to have excellent leak-proof goggles on. Considering how much they charge for these disposable delivery fibers, one would think some form of metal armor could be included to reduce the chance of damage.

      --
      I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
  3. Re:How often does this happen? by Hlewagastir · · Score: 5, Informative

    AFAIK lasik doesn't make use of fiber optics, the application for this, as I understand it is the use of fiber optics to guide high intensity laser beams internally to attack tumors directly without the need for highly invasive, potentially dangerous surgeries. The problem with using fiber optics in the past, and the reason why this has not been done, is that fiber optic cables can fail, and "leak" the energy from the laser beam into other nearby organs, potentially causing grave damage. This development allows one to detect when a fiber optic cable is about to fail, and shut down the system before severe damage is done, allowing doctors to make use of a technology which was not previously available to them due to concerns about safety.