US 5,281,211 A · Noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus

Abstract

A noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus and method for marking a cornea of a patient's or donor's eye in transplanting surgery or keratoplasty, and in incising or excising the corneal tissue in keratotomy, and for tissue welding and for thermokeratoplasty. The noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus comprises a laser source and a projection optical system for converting laser beams emitted from the laser source into coaxially distributed beam spots on the cornea. The apparatus further includes a multiple-facet prismatic axicon lens system movably mounted for varying the distribution of the beam spots on the cornea. In a further embodiment of the method of the present invention, an adjustable mask pattern is inserted in the optical path of the laser source to selectively block certain portions of the laser beams to thereby impinge only selected areas of the cornea.

Claims18

Dependent claims

A noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus, comprising:

means for generating laser beams;
means for projecting said laser beams toward a cornea, said projecting means defining an optical axis, and including:
means for converging the laser beams onto the cornea;
and
axicon means including an axicon lens having at least two prismatic facets for forming the converged laser beams into a plurality of paraxially distributed beam spots on the cornea;
and
means for rotating said axicon means relative to said optical axis of said projecting means.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus

Life of this patent

Noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims18