Course description
Lasers become increasingly important in almost all medical disciplines especially where they can be used selectively to treat soft and hard tissue in a non-invasive manner or for diagnostic purposes. The lecture will provide answers to questions such as: Why lasers? How do lasers work? How does light interact with tissue? We will concentrate on three major interaction categories: Therapeutic (from cell surgery to vision correction and general surgery), Diagnostic (from detection of neural cell activity to diagnostics of cancer), and Imaging (from single molecules to optical tomography). Basic mechanisms of light propagation in tissue as well as laser-tissue-interactions i.e. photochemical, photothermal and photomechanical interaction will be discussed. The influence of laser wavelength and pulse duration on the interaction process will be studied. Different laser and beam delivery systems used in medicine will be presented. Selected clinical laser applications i.e. in ophthalmology, urology, gynecology and ENT-surgery will be discussed. Basics of diagnostic laser applications (i.e. optical coherence tomography or optoacoustics) as well as laser safety will be considered.
