Ultra-long flashlamp-excited pulse dye laser for therapy and method therefor

Abstract

A flashlamp-excited dye laser generating light pulses for therapy has a circulator which circulates a gain media through a dye cell. A controller coordinates operation by triggering flashlamps to excite the laser gain media while the circulator is circulating the gain media. This operation enables the generation of laser light pulses with a duration of at least one millisecond. If the flow velocity of dye solution is great enough such that the new solution enters the resonant cavity before the solutions in the cavity are substantially spent, ultra-long pulses with high fluences are possible. Specifically, longer pulses of up to 50 msec can be achieved with energies of up to 50 Joules. These energies enable reasonable spot sizes, which makes the invention relevant to dermal therapy, for example.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.