"Image-guided ultrafast laser scalpels as the next generation precise and minimally invasive clinical surgery tools"

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

12:00pm | Schiciano Auditorium - Side B

Presenter

Adela Ben-Yakar , Associate Professor, Mr. N. Doug Williams Memorial Centennial Fellowship in Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering

The fundamental goal in surgery is to remove the unwanted tissue while preserving healthy tissue. Ablation with femtosecond laser pulses provides unprecedented microsurgical precision in tissue with minimal thermal and mechanical side effects. However, the application of this surgical method has been limited to ophthalmological applications mainly because of the lack of the fiber optic delivery of amplified ultrafast laser pulses to the surgical site through a flexible, miniaturized probe. Taking on this challenge, we have developed several generations of miniaturized endoscopic probes where the ultrashort laser pulses are delivered through air-core photonic bandgap fibers. The most recent development of a fully hand-held, 5 mm, piezo-actuated, ultrafast laser scalpel for microsurgery, have the capability to deliver energies in excess of 5 μJ per pulse. This design incorporates Kagome fiber based laser delivery, piezoelectric scanning for beam steering, and a plug and play modular objective design with calcium fluoride lenses. Using these endoscopes, we demonstrated successful ablation and nonlinear imaging of cells and tissue with high resolution. Translation of this disruptive technology into clinic will have a transformative effect on the way that we treat patients in surgery room. By minimizing collateral tissue damage normally associated with surgical procedures, the new techniques will suppress scar formation, healing time, and post-surgery pain, thereby helping to preserve anatomic functionality at the surgical treatment site and improve patients' care.

Adela Ben-Yakar is a professor in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering and a member of the Graduate Student Council in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Institute of for Cellular and Molecular Biology, and Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Engineering (2000). She completed a postdoctoral work at Stanford University in the Applied Physics Department, and Harvard University in the Physics Department (2000-2004). Her research focuses in two main research areas. 1) Development of high-throughput opto-fluidics systems for drug screening using small animal models as applied to nerve regeneration, neurodegenerative diseases, and aging and 2) Ultrafast laser microsurgery and nonlinear imaging, as applied to clinical image-guided surgery systems for treatment of disease such as scarred vocal folds. Dr. Ben-Yakar is an OSA Fellow, a senior member of the SPIE, and a member of IEEE, ASME, SLAS among others. She is the Faculty Investment Initiative Program Fellow and Endowed Faculty Fellow of the Mr. N. Doug Williams Memorial Centennial Fellowship in Engineering. She is the recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, Zonta Amelia Earhart Award, NSF Career Award, Human Frontier Science Program Research Award, and NIH Director's Transformative Award.