MicroPulse Technology Spares Tissue in Eye Surgeries

A new short pulse dosing technology offers fine control of the characteristics of visible light laser systems, allowing tissue sparing eye surgeries.

The MicroPulse technology is based on Tissue Sparing Photocoagulation (TSP), a controlled laser dosing approach that limits the time laser-induced heat can to spread to adjacent tissues, thus providing fine control of energy delivered; at the same time, TSP sets longer intervals between pulses, enabling cooling to take place before the next pulse is delivered. The technology is intended for use in patients suffering from proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), diabetic macular edema (DME), extrafoveal, juxtafoveal and some types of subfoveal retinal neovascularization (SRNV), and other sight-threatening retinal and glaucoma disorders. In clinical studies, the system has demonstrated favorable outcomes and significantly less damage to healthy retinal structures compared to traditional continuous wave laser treatment.

The heart of the system is a diode pump source, which powers a frequency doubled solid-state visible laser, producing a pulsed laser output with a train of pulses with on times of 25-10,000 microseconds. System resources provide instructions to the diode pump for the creation of the pulsed output, with on and off times that provide for substantial confinement of thermal effects at the target site. This results in TSP without photocoagulation damage to any of the adjacent tissues, and without causing full thickness retinal damage and associated vision loss. MicroPulse technology was developed by Iridex (Mountain View, CA, USA).

"Extending our MicroPulse technology from our infrared laser systems to our visible laser systems … is important because the majority of lasers sold today are visible wavelength laser systems,” said Theodore Boutacoff, President and CEO of Iridex. "It is our profound belief that lasers that support TSP can provide greater benefits to patients than lasers have in the past, and consequently lasers will remain the standard of care for the treatment for many ocular disorders.”

Laser photocoagulation (PC) is the current standard of care for the treatment of retinal diseases. Most of these treatments have been conducted with visible light lasers (green and red lasers), and all of these laser treatments are based upon obtaining a visible endpoint as the optimal tissue reaction, which becomes visible during the laser treatment. These laser pulse widths are typically 50 ms - 300 ms. The energy is absorbed by chromophores such as melanin or blood, and is conducted away from the absorbing or pigmented layers into adjacent nonabsorbing and nonexposed layers, thus causing thermal damage laterally and axially into the clear layers, in addition to the pigmented layers.

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