Including parameterization of the discrete ablation process into a planning and simulation environment for...

Material processing using laser became a widely used method especially in the scope of industrial automation. The systems are mostly based on a precise model of the laser process and the according parameterization. Beside the industrial use the laser as an instrument to treat human tissue has become an integral part in medicine as well. Human tissue as an inhomogeneous material to process, poses the question of how to determine a model, which reflects the interaction processes with a specific laser.Recently it could be shown that the pulsed CO2 laser is suitable to ablate bony and cartilage tissue. Until now this thermo-mechanical bone ablation is not characterized as a discrete process. In order to plan and simulate the ablation process in the correct level of detail, the parameterization is indispensable. We developed a planning and simulation environment, determined parameters by confocal measurements of bony specimen and use these results to transfer planned cutting trajectories into a pulse sequence and corresponding robot locations.