Applications of lasers in the medical field and killer cells, any link?
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
We all heard about lasers in new exciting medical applications lately. Most of these applications involved the fantastic capacity of laser to precisely burn human tissue with such precision that normal or healthy cells nearby stays untouched.
This article will bring you to the next level with how lasers can be used in the medical field to heal your body. But first, let’s introduce you to two of the most challenging things in the medical world.
Cancer: the biggest challenge of the XXI century in the medical field
Hippocrates, considered the father of medicine, thought we had 4 humors. He believed any excess of these humors could cause disease, including cancer. My mother was right: a good sense of humor is a healthy sign (I never thought she read Hippocrates). What she didn’t tell me, and I can tell you with certainty, is that cancer is a little more complicated than that.
The immune system: one of the most complex system in the human body
The immune system protects us from thousands of different types of infections. In simple terms, it prevents pathogens such as bacteria and viruses from entering our organs, among other things, without killing our healthy cells. One of the body cell involved in the destruction of cells from foreign bodies is called lymphocyte type T, or killer cells. They are responsible for eliminating cancerous cells but sometimes they let cancers grow freely: how come?
Well maybe not for so long thanks to the new buzz word in cancerology, called immunotherapy. Folks, thanks to immunotherapy, our own body, with some help of the latest discoveries in oncology, will give a little boost to our T-cells (killer cells) to first identify the cancer cells, then destroy them along with any other pathology that wants to harm you. No more drugs like chemotherapy.
So, how do lasers help the medical field in such a complex process?
A team of researchers used an 805 nm diode laser to heat the surface of a melanoma. A special dye absorbing that particular wavelength helps ensure the surrounding cells were not receiving the same 1 W/cm2 power density exposure. In simple terms, by heating the cancerous cells, it destroys most of them but there are ones that will survive and ultimately create antigens. And then, here comes the T-cell (killer cells) that are trained to recognize antigens and destroy them. What a nice application of lasers in the medical field!
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Typically, a cancer grows because the T-cells can not recognize any of the antigens to eliminate. With the help of a diode laser and the resulting heating process, antigens are created, recognized and then eliminate. Smart isn’t?
We, at Gentec-EO, have worked with a large number of medical applications. We developed over the years, different solutions that can be integrated in those different laser applications for medical purposes. The medical field itself implies strict regulations about safety. Ensuring that the right laser power level or laser energy level is used on the human body in one of them.
For example, our UP12E-10S-H5-MT-B laser power detector integrates a PCB that amplifies the output signal as well as anticipating it in order to provide a quick feedback to the system.
This is certainly a good example of a product that meets the laser beam measurement needs of the medical field. At only, 38 x 38 x 28.6 mm, it also helps to keep the solution compact and easy to incorporate in any larger system.
There are countless applications of laser in the medical field nowadays. Subscribe to our newsletter below to know more about them and how Gentec-EO offers the ideal solution for such applications.
