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Ultraviolet femtosecond laser creation of corneal flap
Ronan Le Harzic1, Karsten König, Christian Wüllner
1Fraunhofer Institute of Biomedical Technology, St Ingbert, Germany. ronan.leharzic@ibmt.fraunhofer.de
Purpose:
To study parameters for ocular femtosecond laser surgery in terms of process efficiency and safety aspects using ultraviolet (UV) femtosecond laser pulses.
Methods:
Studies on corneal surgery and flap processing on enucleated porcine eyes were performed using a newly developed ytterbium-doped gain media laser source. Ultraviolet femtosecond laser pulses centered at a wavelength of 345 nm and working at a repetition rate of 100 kHz were generated by the third harmonics of the 1035-nm fundamental wavelength.
Results:
Flaps with a diameter of 6 mm and a thickness of 100 microm were created in less than 2 minutes with low energy pulses. Transmissions and spectral measurements were performed during flap processing. Less than 2% UV radiation reaches the retina during corneal flap processing. A detectable transmittance towards the retina of visible light centered on 440 nm was found for UV pulses.
Conclusions:
Ultraviolet corneal refractive surgery is a novel procedure and has the potential to be an alternative to infrared refractive surgery considering safety aspects.
