Potential of safe XeCl laser angioplasty

The goal of this study is to further clarify the influence of the laser parameters on the safety of excimer laser angioplasty and to demonstrate the potential of XeCl laser to be a probe and a fire source simultaneously. On the base of a simple model it is demonstrated that the heat accumulation effects in the XeCl laser irradiated tissues is dependent on the ratio of the laser pulse repetition rate and the tissue thermal diffusion time and that there would not be a thermal injury of the tissues for pulse repetition rates under 15Hz. It was demonstrated that with a specially designed for use with optical fibers and a XeCl excimer laser angioplasty system fluorometer the real time diagnosis of vascular diseases and the feedback control for efficient and safe excimer laser angioplasty are possible.