中红外(MIR)光是指范围从3至30μm的波长,并且是用于消融软组织和硬组织的最有吸引力的光谱区域。这是因为生物组织的积木,比如水,蛋白质,和脂质,在MIR波长中表现出分子振动模式,导致强烈的MIR光吸收。迄今为止,研究人员研究用于外科手术的MIR激光器使用了笨重的光源,比如自由电子激光器,非线性光发生器,和二氧化碳激光器。我们演示了一个微小的(几微米宽,几毫米长)MIR带间级联激光器(ICL),用于手术热消融应用。
我们的目标是证明ICL在外科热消融中的应用,并证明其在消融正常成纤维细胞和原发性未分化多形性肉瘤细胞(C1619)中的功效。
我们对健康和癌变组织样本进行了傅里叶变换红外光谱分析,这表明肿瘤组织在3.3μm波长附近的吸收高于健康组织。这些结果使我们能够选择ICL发射波长,λ,3.3μm以探测ICL暴露后的正常成纤维细胞和原发性未分化多形性肉瘤细胞存活。
我们表明,在3-μmMIR波长附近,肿瘤组织的吸收高于健康组织的吸收。我们证明,ICL能够在非常低的功率水平下消融癌细胞,可以在临床上实施,但是与正常成纤维细胞相比,这种作用似乎对C1619没有特异性。
我们的研究表明,ICL可能代表了一个令人兴奋的新途径,以精确的激光为基础的热消融。
Mid-infrared (MIR) light refers to wavelengths ranging from 3 to 30 μm and is the most attractive spectral region for ablation of soft and hard tissues. This is because building blocks of biological tissue, such as water, proteins, and lipids, exhibit molecular vibrational modes in the MIR wavelengths that result in strong MIR light absorption. To date, researchers investigating MIR lasers for surgical applications have used bulky light sources, such as free electron lasers, nonlinear light generators, and carbon dioxide lasers. We demonstrate the use of a tiny (a few microns wide, a few millimeters long) MIR interband cascade laser (ICL) for surgical thermal ablation applications.
Our goal is to demonstrate the use of an ICL for surgical thermal ablation and demonstrate its efficacy in ablating normal fibroblasts and primary undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma tumor cells (C1619).
We conducted Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis of healthy and cancerous tissue samples, which indicated that the absorption of tumor tissue is higher than healthy tissue around 3.3-μm wavelength. These results enabled us to select an ICL emission wavelength, λ, of 3.3 μm to probe normal fibroblast and primary undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma cell survival after ICL exposure.
We show that the absorption of tumorous tissue is higher than that of healthy tissues around the 3-μm MIR wavelength. We demonstrate that the ICL is able to ablate cancer cells at very low-power levels that can be clinically implemented but that this effect does not appear to be specific to C1619 when compared to normal fibroblasts.
Our study demonstrates that ICLs may represent an exciting new avenue toward precise laser-based thermal ablation.