Université de Fribourg

Ultrafast laser ablation for targeted atherosclerotic plaque removal

Lanvin, Thomas ; Conkey, Donald B. ; Descloux, Laurent ; Frobert, Aurelien ; Valentin, Jeremy ; Goy, Jean-Jacques ; Cook, Stéphane ; Giraud, Marie-Noelle ; Psaltis, Demetri

In: SPIE Proceedings, 2015, vol. 9542, p. 95420Z–95420Z–6

Coronary artery disease, the main cause of heart disease, develops as immune cells and lipids accumulate into plaques within the coronary arterial wall. As a plaque grows, the tissue layer (fibrous cap) separating it from the blood flow becomes thinner and increasingly susceptible to rupturing and causing a potentially lethal thrombosis. The stabilization and/or treatment of atherosclerotic...

Université de Fribourg

Subsurface ablation of atherosclerotic plaque using ultrafast laser pulses

Lanvin, Thomas ; Conkey, Donald B. ; Frobert, Aurelien ; Valentin, Jeremy ; Goy, Jean-Jacques ; Cook, Stéphane ; Giraud, Marie-Noelle ; Psaltis, Demetri

In: Biomedical Optics Express, 2015, vol. 6, no. 7, p. 2552

We perform subsurface ablation of atherosclerotic plaque using ultrafast pulses. Excised mouse aortas containing atherosclerotic plaque were ablated with ultrafast near-infrared (NIR) laser pulses. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) was used to observe the ablation result, while the physical damage was inspected in histological sections. We characterize the effects of incident pulse energy on...