Controlling Laser Irradiation with Tissue Temperature Feedback Enhances Photothermal Applications: Ex-Vivo Evaluation on Bovine Liver

Achieving repeatable and successful results without causing excessive collateral damage is of paramount importance for photothermal laser applications. Predetermined laser parameters cannot ensure patient safety and treatment success due to variance between optical and thermal characteristics among subjects. Controlling laser irradiation with tissue temperature feedback is the current gold standard for various photothermal treatments (PTT) which are rate processes described by the Arrhenius temperature integral. This study establishes the validity of our low-cost design that makes tissue surface temperature control during photothermal laser applications more accessible in resource limited clinical environments. We demonstrated the practical performance and potential of our system with ex-vivo bovine liver irradiation using an ytterbium fiber laser (<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mi>λ</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>1071</mn><mtext> </mtext><mrow><mi mathvariant="normal">n</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">m</mi></mrow></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula>) with two independent variables: laser power (3.4 W, 6.8 W and 10.2 W) and target surface temperature (55 °C, 65 °C and 75 °C). Our system efficiently maintained tissue surface temperatures at target values in all laser power groups. In contrast, fixed-dose application groups displayed a high final temperature range and variation in the control experiment. Temperature–time responses of samples varied significantly, in agreement with a wide range of optical and thermal coefficients. Long exposure duration groups (lower power, higher target temperature) displayed more radical differences suggesting a dominance of optical and thermal characteristics over the response. The low-cost surface-temperature-controlled medical laser system we have developed is capable of ensuring the success and reproducibility of PTT modalities and patient safety.