ULTRAFAST RADIATION HEAT TRANSFER IN LASER TISSUE WELDING AND SOLDERING

Abstract

Laser tissue welding and soldering with use of short laser pulses are proposed. The transient radiation heat transfer in the picosecond time scale is numerically investigated for the first time using the discrete ordinate method for cylindrical geometries. The numerical method developed incorporates the propagation of radiation with the speed of light. The temporal radiation fields of tissue cylinders under the irradiation of short laser pulses are obtained. The use of short laser pulses for tissue welding and soldering is found to have reduced thermal damage to the healthy tissue and improves the uniformity of heating in the tissue closure region in both the depth and radial directions. The addition of absorbing solders in tissue soldering results in a well-confined radiation energy deposition field in the proximity of the solder-stained region and lessens the outgoing radiative heat flux at the laser incident surface. Comparisons of radiation heat transfer are made between the spatially square-variance and Gaussian-variance laser inputs and between the temporally Gaussian-profile and skewed-profile pulses, respectively.

Z. Guo acknowledges partial support of this research by the New Jersey Space Grant Consortium, National Science Foundation Grant CTS-0318001, the Charles and Johanna Busch Memorial Fund managed at Rutgers University, and an Academic Excellence Fund Award from Rutgers University.