Radiation-based dermatological devices and methods

A device for providing radiation-based dermatological treatments, the device comprising:

• a device body configured to be handheld by a user;
• a VCSEL laser embodied on a chip and including multiple micro-emitters arranged in an array of multiple emitter zones provided on the chip, each emitter zone including a plurality of the micro-emitters and defining a collective beam source such that the multiple emitter zones define multiple collective beam sources;
• a processor;
• computer instructions stored in a non-transitory computer-readable medium and executable by the processor to pulse the multiple emitter zones of the VCSEL laser to generate multiple discrete treatment spots on the skin simultaneously, wherein the plurality of micro-emitters of each emitter zone collectively generate a discrete laser beam for generating one of the discrete treatment spots on the skin, wherein the simultaneously generated multiple discrete treatment spots are spaced apart from each other by areas of non-treated skin, thereby providing a fractional treatment to the skin, wherein each treatment spot is defined by a contiguous area on the skin surface receiving at least 1/e2 times the maximum intensity of a respective beam pulse, which maximum intensity is sufficient to cause a lesion in the skin, and the areas of non-treated skin receive insufficient radiation to qualify as a treatment spot;
• wherein at least two of the multiple emitter zones are independently controllable with respect to each other, such that at least one operational parameter of the at least two emitter zones can be independently controlled;
• and
• an application end configured to be manually moved across the surface of the skin during a treatment session.

A device for providing radiation-based dermatological treatments, the device comprising:

• a device body configured to be handheld by a user;
• a VCSEL laser embodied on a chip supported in the device body, the VCSEL laser including multiple spaced-apart VCSEL beam sources provided on the chip,
• hardware circuitry that pulses the multiple spaced-apart VCSEL beam sources to simultaneously generate multiple discrete laser beams for generating multiple discrete treatment spots on the skin simultaneously, the simultaneously generated multiple discrete treatment spots being spaced apart from each other by areas of non-treated skin, to thereby provide a fractional treatment to the skin, wherein each treatment spot is defined by a contiguous area on the skin surface receiving at least 1/e2 times the maximum intensity of a respective beam pulse, and the areas of non-treated skin receive insufficient radiation to qualify as a treatment spot;
• wherein the multiple spaced-apart VCSEL beam sources are provided by multiple micro-emitters arranged in an array of multiple emitter zones, each emitter zone including at least one of the micro-emitters, the at least one micro-emitter of each emitter zone generating one of the multiple discrete laser beams, such that each emitter zone forms one of the multiple VCSEL beam sources, and
• an application end configured to be manually moved across the surface of the skin during a treatment session.