Micro laser ablation system integrated with image sensor for minimally invasive surgery

A novel micro surgical system with a micro laser ablation module integrated with an imaging sensor is designed and developed for minimally invasive surgery. The system consists of a Nd:YAG laser source with the wavelength of 1064nm to remove lesion, a CCD camera to guide laser, a parallel four-bar mechanism, an endoscope bending section, a rigid steel tube, an aluminum-alloy supporting table and a personal computer for sending control commands. The advantage of the system is the small size of its distal module, i.e., the diameter and the length of the module are 3.5 millimeters and 15.0 millimeters, respectively. A methodological frame for ablating lesion using the system proposed is developed based on the system configuration. Experiments on ex-vivo swine tissue are implemented to evaluate laser ablation performance of the prototyped system.