News — Duotome
IQ receives US Patent for Right Angle Output Side Firing Fiber
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US Patent number 9,618,700 issued today as a stand alone utility patent covering three embodiments of right angle side fire fibers with 19 claims allowed. The invention is an outgrowth of InnovaQuartz new one-piece side firing fiber caps (Patented) where astigmatic distortion is exploited to permit exceeding the ~75 degree off-axis limit of competing technologies. Ironically, through purposeful distortion the invention produces an essentially distortion-free output as compared with the elliptical distortion suffered by lower angle emission devices. The invention also provided for rotation of the output beyond 90 degrees where there is a need for a back-firing fiber, but not...
From Abe to MoXy™ and Beyond Part 5: More Fibers of the 1990s
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John Brekke’s fiber design from 1994 is one of the few lateral fiber designs of the era that remains on the market today, marketed as Scatterfree™ by Laser Peripherals. As can be seen in figures 10 and 11 (below the next paragraph) taken from the first patent, the concept is simple and it does basically work. In contrast to Pon, however, Brekke failed to properly identify the true sources of the unwanted emissions from unfused fibers. Quoting the patent, in reference to figures 5 and 6 immediately below, “The reflected light 27 and light 29 are unwanted and potentially unsafe...
From Abe to MoXy™ and Beyond -- Part 4: The 1990s Boom
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The 1990s saw a boom in laser TURP (Transurethral Resection of the Prostate) using mostly Nd:YAG lasers. Nd:YAGs showed promise for lowering the classical side effects of standard TURP, where a hot wire loop is used to melt/carve away strips of hyperplastic tissue; their CW (continuous wave) output produced smoother surfaces than holmium lasers do, they did not strongly interact with the sterile irrigation fluid and were less damaging to fibers than holmium lasers. Laserscope’s ADD-Stat™ fiber -- the progenitor to the Model 2090 used in the GreenLight™ revolution of 2000 -- was a fairly popular device that was used...
From Abe to MoXy™ and Beyond; Part 3 -- Moses' Math Works
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Part 3 is a bit of a departure from my planned sequence for this series. A colleague has graciously permitted me to share a slow motion video that he produced of a generic side fire fiber delivering a single pulse of holmium energy into a beaker of water. Herein I hope to demonstrate that surgical fiber performance can be modeled/predicted, and quite accurately, and that there isn't anything mysterious or magical involved. Sure, some aspects of laser surgery are extremely complex, like laser-tissue interactions, but the tools that science provides do allow us to design devices intelligently. That's my company's motto, after all:...
From Abe to MoXy™ and Beyond; Part 2 -- Abe's Side Fire Solution(s)
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Part 1 of this series was mostly a review of Snell's law and Fresnel reflections as they explain the weird output of bevel polished fibers. Here we see some more Snell and Fresnel issues and the earliest Band-Aid® treatments designed to mitigate these issues. Part 2: Abe's Solution(s) Before we get into what Abe saw as solutions to the issues outlined, we should probably address the problem that I alluded to in Part 1: the disappointing results of polishing a fiber at the calculated TIR angle for lateral redirection of the output. In so doing, you’ll more fully understand why...