Evaluation of ablation differences in air and water for hard tissues using full-field optical coherence microscopy

Abstract

To clarify the role of a natural or artificial liquid environment in the free-running infrared pulsed laser ablation of hard biological tissues, two- and three-dimensional morphologies of laser-induced craters must be quantitatively measured to distinguish ablation differences in air and in water. Full-field optical coherence microscopy is introduced, which has non-contact, non-destructive, non-preprocessing and higher-resolution advantages. Experimental results indicate that the ablation performances in air and in water are comparable for few laser pulses, but the ablation difference becomes obvious for more laser pulses. Optical coherence microscopy is more feasible than conventional means for the morphological measurement of craters. © 2012 Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.