Photodisruptive laser fragmentation of tissue

This application claims benefit from and priority of provisional application “Photodisruptive laser fragmentation of tissue”, Ser. No. 61/020,115, filed on Jan. 9, 2008, which incorporated by reference in its entirety as part of the disclosure of this application.

This application relates to laser surgery techniques and systems for operating on eyes.

Laser light can be used to perform surgical operations on various parts of an eye for vision correction and other medical treatment. Techniques for performing such procedures with higher efficiency may provide desired benefits.

A method of photodisruptive laser surgery and corresponding system are provided. In some implementations the method of fragmenting biological tissue with a photodisruptive laser includes selecting a target region of the tissue for fragmentation, directing a beam of laser pulses to the selected target region of the tissue, and forming cells in the target region of the tissue by directing the laser beam to generate cell boundaries.

In some implementations the tissue is a tissue of an eye.

In some implementations the tissue is a crystalline lens of the eye.

In some implementations the method further includes inserting an aspiration needle into the target region and removing fragmented tissue from the target region already scanned by the laser beam by using the aspiration needle.

In some implementations the forming the cells includes forming cells with size sufficiently small to pass through the aspiration needle.

In some implementations the forming the cells includes forming the cells arranged in an array.

In some implementations the array is a regular array.

In some implementations the regular array is one of a simple cubic lattice, a face centered lattice, a body centered lattice, a hexagonal lattice, a Bravais lattice, and a stack of two dimensional lattices.

In some implementations the array is essentially a random array.

In some implementations the forming the cells includes fragmenting the target tissue into cells of spheres or polyhedra.

In some implementations the forming the cells includes scanning the laser beam to form multiple cells in parallel in a layer.

In some implementations the forming the cells includes directing the laser beam to form individual cells successively.

In some implementations the forming the cells includes scanning the laser beam to form a cell array progressing from a posterior to an anterior direction, or scanning the laser beam to form a cell array progressing from an anterior to a posterior direction.

In some implementations the directing the laser beam to generate cell boundaries includes generating the cell boundaries by creating layers of bubbles in the target region of the tissue.

In some implementations the creating layers of bubbles includes creating a layer of bubbles by applying a laser beam with an essentially constant power, or with a varying power.