A MODEL OF TISSUE CHARRING DURING INTERSTITIAL LASER PHOTOCOAGULATION: ESTIMATION OF THE CHAR TEMPERATURE

Interstitial laser photocoagulation (ELP) was performed ex vivo in lean bovine muscle by delivering 1.5 W of continuouswave 1064 nm Nd:YAG laser energy from a 400 μm core planecut optical fiber. The strategy for determining the char temperature involved measuring temperatures where thermal gradients were reduced, and extracting times at which temperature-time profiles displayed interesting nonlinear changes. These times were used to guide a …