Smart Optical Fibers Could Save Lives

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."

Comments

A step forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I would have hoped they would already have a technology in place to stop lasers destroying vital parts of your body while in surgery.

How often does this happen?

[Gothmolly]

I mean, I know several people who've gotten LASIK surgery on their eyes, and its been around for years, yet I've never heard of a laser 'breaking' and damaging anything. Is this a solution looking for a problem?
I think self-monitoring fiber optics would be GREAT in the datacom industry... in the medical field its surely a 'nice to have'.

Ruining my app chances..

[Sir Nickel Deuce]

Why do they always seem to post 6 MIT stories a day during the last month of admissions? :|

Re:Is it worth it?

[managedcode]

If that was not a major problem, then MIT wouldn't have wasted so much resources in finding a solution.

public health saves lives

[frankmu]

just a side comment. we should remember that PUBLIC HEALTH has saved more lives than surgeries and medicines. Vaccinations, smoking cessation, access to clean water, things like that. fiberoptics for communications will save more lives than laser surgery. as a physician, i have to remind my self that alot of what i do is just icing on the cake.