Argon-krypton ion laser as light source for medical photocoagulation applications

ABSTRACT Photocoagulators are one of the most popular laser devices in medicine. Due to different kind of inter action of particular wavelength range of laser light with live tissues, sources of laser radiation which can cover as much as possible of visible spectrum are still very wanted (see [1,2]). In last years it also can be observed the intensive develo ping works on new photocoagulation technique called “micropulse coagu lation” [3,4]. The most critical feature of lasers for micropulse coagulation is the possibility of fast switching be tween two selected laser power values. It seems tha t the good proposal for these applications can be ion laser filled with argon-krypton mixture. Authors previously have ind icated the possibility of improvement of generation conditions in this type of laser in presence of buffer gases [5,6] and with use developed by authors pulse supply regime [7,8]. The se improvements allow to obtain output power values of most important argon and krypton laser lines in laser fi lled with mixture of both gases, similar to values available in laser filled with pure gases. Presented in this paper the following researches are concerned on verification of possibilities of use of the developed laser system in photocoagulati on with possibility of use of the laser system in m icropulse coagulation technique. Keywords: gas laser, ion laser, argon laser, krypton laser