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

Incident Rate?

[JoeShmoe950]

With the current "unsmart" lasers, what is the rate of misses right now? have there been any dangerous or even fatal laser misses, and how much safety will this new method actually bring about?

Wow

[gcnaddict]

"can harm you if they escape from their enclosures ... if a fiber wall is about to break"

That possible? Gee, thanks for making me not want to have LASIK done on my eyes >_ Seriously, I hope this technology comes out of testing and into RWU (Real world use) very soon. If this kind of news leaks out, public paranoia will be all the rage :P