Laser ablation on vascular diseases: mechanisms and influencing factors.

Vascular diseases, such as venous insufficiency and coronary artery diseases, have been threatening the health of people. Efficient treatment with proper postoperative care is required to relieve the pain of the patients. Traditionally, venous insufficiency is treated with ligation and stripping, an open surgery whose complication rate cannot be ignored. Coronary artery disease is often treated with balloon angioplasty during which undilatable lesions may be encountered, limiting the efficacy of this approach. With advances in laser photonics and percutaneous coronary intervention procedure, laser ablation is emerging as an alternative and adjunctive therapy for these diseases. Endovenous laser ablation has the advantages of high success rate, low complication risk, and fast postoperative recovery. Laser ablation in arteries can handle uncrossable or undilatable lesions with a low incidence of serious complications. In this review, previously published research concerning vascular diseases and their therapies are analyzed in order to provide a clear explanation of the mechanisms and merits of laser ablation. For endovenous laser ablation, the main mechanisms are steam bubbles, heat conduction, and heat pipe, and three main influencing factors are wavelength, fiber types, and laser energy density. For excimer laser coronary atherectomy, the main mechanisms are photochemical, photothermal, and photomechanical effects, and three main influencing factors are catheter, medium, and laser parameters.

Review on Laser Technology in Intravascular Imaging and Treatment.

Blood vessels are one of the most essential organs, which nourish all tissues in our body. Once there are intravascular plaques or vascular occlusion, other organs and circulatory systems will not work properly. Therefore, it is necessary to detect abnormal blood vessels by intravascular imaging technologies for subsequent vascular treatment. The emergence of lasers and fiber optics promotes the development of intravascular imaging and treatment. Laser imaging techniques can obtain deep vascular images owing to light scattering and absorption properties. Moreover, photothermal and photomechanical effects of laser make it possible to treat vascular diseases accurately. In this review, we present the research progress and applications of laser techniques in intravascular imaging and treatment. Firstly, we introduce intravascular optical coherent tomography and intravascular photoacoustic imaging, which can obtain various information of plaques. Multimodal intravascular imaging techniques provide more information about intravascular plaques, which have an essential influence on intravascular imaging. Secondly, two laser techniques including laser angioplasty and endovenous laser ablation are discussed for the treatment of arterial and venous diseases, respectively. Finally, the outlook of laser techniques in blood vessels, as well as the integration of laser imaging and treatment are prospected in the section of discussions.

Optical ultrasound sensors for photoacoustic imaging: a narrative review.

Optical ultrasound sensors have been increasingly employed in biomedical diagnosis and photoacoustic imaging (PAI) due to high sensitivity and resolution. PAI could visualize the distribution of ultrasound excited by laser pulses in biological tissues. The information of tissues is detected by ultrasound sensors in order to reconstruct structural images. However, traditional ultrasound transducers are made of piezoelectric films that lose sensitivity quadratically with the size reduction. In addition, the influence of electromagnetic interference limits further applications of traditional ultrasound transducers. Therefore, optical ultrasound sensors are developed to overcome these shortcomings. In this review, optical ultrasound sensors are classified into resonant and non-resonant ones in view of physical principles. The principles and basic parameters of sensors are introduced in detail. Moreover, the state of the art of optical ultrasound sensors and applications in PAI are also presented. Furthermore, the merits and drawbacks of sensors based on resonance and non-resonance are discussed in perspectives. We believe this review could provide researchers with a better understanding of the current status of optical ultrasound sensors and biomedical applications.

MXenes: synthesis, incorporation, and applications in ultrafast lasers.

The rapid expansion of nanotechnology and material science prompts two-dimensional (2D) materials to be extensively used in biomedicine, optoelectronic devices, and ultrafast photonics. Owing to the broadband operation, ultrafast recovery time, and saturable absorption properties, 2D materials become the promising candidates for being saturable absorbers in ultrafast pulsed lasers. In recent years, the novel 2D MXene materials have occupied the forefront due to their superior optical and electronic, as well as mechanical and chemical properties. Herein, we introduce the fabrication methods of MXenes, incorporation methods of combining 2D materials with laser cavities, and applications of ultrafast pulsed lasers based on MXenes. Firstly, top-down and bottom-up approaches are two types of fabrication methods, where top-down way mainly contains acid etching and the chief way of bottom-up method is chemical vapor deposition. In addition to these two typical ones, other methods are also discussed. Then we summarize the advantages and drawbacks of these approaches. Besides, commonly used incorporation methods, such as sandwich structure, optical deposition, as well as coupling with D-shaped, tapered, and photonic crystal fibers are reviewed. We also discuss their merits, defects, and conditions of selecting different methods. Moreover, we introduce the state of the art of ultrafast pulsed lasers based on MXenes at different wavelengths and highlight some excellent output performance. Ultimately, the outlook for improving fabrication methods and applications of MXene-based ultrafast lasers is presented.

Graphene-Coupled Terahertz Semiconductor Lasers for Enhanced Passive Frequency Comb Operation.

Optical frequency combs, consisting of well-controlled equidistant frequency lines, have been widely used in precision spectroscopy and metrology. Terahertz combs have been realized in quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) by employing either an active mode-locking or phase seeding technique, or a dispersion compensator mirror. However, it remains a challenge to achieve the passive comb formation in terahertz semiconductor lasers due to the insufficient nonlinearities of conventional saturable absorbers. Here, a passive terahertz frequency comb is demonstrated by coupling a multilayer graphene sample into a QCL compound cavity. The terahertz modes are self-stabilized with intermode beat note linewidths down to a record of 700 Hz and the comb operation of graphene-coupled QCLs is validated by on-chip dual-comb measurements. Furthermore, the optical pulse emitted from the graphene-coupled QCL is directly measured employing a terahertz pump-probe technique. The enhanced passive frequency comb operation is attributed to the saturable absorption behavior of the graphene-integrated saturable absorber mirror, as well as the dispersion compensation introduced by the graphene sample. The results provide a conceptually different graphene-based approach for passive comb formation in terahertz QCLs, opening up intriguing opportunities for fast and high-precision terahertz spectroscopy and nonlinear photonics.

Terahertz and Photoelectron Emission from Nanoporous Gold Films on Semiconductors.

Efficient terahertz and photoelectron emission were observed from nano-porous gold (NPG) films deposited on an intrinsic gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductor substrate stimulated by femtosecond laser with pulse width of 60 fs. Time-domain THz emission and reflection spectroscopy confirmed that the free charges accelerated by irradiated femtosecond laser pulses transferred from the NPG films into the GaAs substrates. Accordingly, charges accumulation was reduced in the NPG films, resulting in a stronger emission of THz pulse than that from NPG films deposited on SiO2 substrate. Charges injected into the GaAs substrate enforced an observable decrease of the THz refractive index proportional to the intensity of incident light. In comparison, for NPG deposited on glass substrates, laser induced free charges were accumulated in the NPG films, and femtosecond laser pulses irradiating on the NPG films made no changes of the THz refractive index of the glass substrates.

Filamentary plasma grating induced by interference of two femtosecond laser pulses in water.

We present direct observation of filamentary plasma grating induced by interference between two noncollinear infrared femtosecond pulses in water by doping with gold nanoparticles. The gold nanoparticles act as scattering media in water and visualize the fine structure of local optical fields of plasma grating. By measuring the variation of local conductivity as laser undergoes filamentation in water, the generated electron density in water is qualitatively studied. Significant enhancement of local electron density is observed at the intersecting region as two laser beams form plasma grating, indicating the breakthrough of clamped intensity of a conventional filament in water.

Terahertz modulation induced by filament interaction.

We experimentally demonstrated that nonlinear filament interaction could spectrally modulate terahertz (THz) radiation generated from asymmetric two-color filaments. It was the spatial plasma density modulation in plasma channels that induced the THz spectral modulation. As a result of optical manipulation of electron density in the filamentary plasma gratings, the proportion of high-frequency THz spectra increased, while that of low-frequency THz spectra decreased, indicating that the increase of free electron density in the filamentary plasma grating brought about THz frequency upshifts.