Excimer laser ablation of soft tissue: a study of the content of rapidly expanding and collapsing bubbles

Both holmium (/spl lambda/=2.09 /spl mu/m) and excimer (/spl lambda/=308 nm) lasers are used for ablation of tissue. In a previous study, excimer laser ablation of aorta produced rapidly expanding and collapsing vapor bubbles. To investigate whether the excimer-induced bubble is caused by vaporization of (tissue) water, the threshold fluence for bubble formation at a bare fiber tip in water and on tissue was compared between the excimer laser (pulse length 115 ns) and the Q-switched and free-running holmium lasers (pulse length 1 /spl mu/s and 250 /spl mu/s, respectively). To induce bubble formation by excimer laser light in water, the absorber Oxybuprocaine-hydrochloride (OBP-HCl) was added to the water. Fast flash photography was used to measure the threshold fluence as a function of the water temperature (6-90/spl deg/C) at ambient pressure and as a function of the boiling temperature of water (100-184/spl deg/C) at augmented environmental pressures (1-11 bar). For both the holmium and excimer laser, the threshold fluence for bubble formation decreased proportionally with increasing water temperature (correlation coefficient r=0.95-0.99). Correspondingly, the threshold fluence for bubble formation increased with increasing boiling temperature of water. A similar correlation was found for the excimer laser-induced bubble formation on tissue. Furthermore, for both the holmium and the excimer laser, the threshold fluence for water vaporization was much lower than theoretically predicted values. It is concluded that the principal content of the large (up to 3 mm), short lived ( >