초록 ▼

A noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus and method for marking a cornea of a patient's or donor's eye in transplanting surgery or keratoplasty, and in incising or excising the corneal tissue in keratotomy, and for tissue welding during thermokeratoplasty. The noncontact laser microsurgical appara

A noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus and method for marking a cornea of a patient's or donor's eye in transplanting surgery or keratoplasty, and in incising or excising the corneal tissue in keratotomy, and for tissue welding during thermokeratoplasty. The noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus comprises a laser source and a projection optical system for converting laser beams emitted from the laser source into coaxially distributed beam spots on the cornea. The apparatus further includes a multiple-facet prismatic axicon lens system movably mounted for varying the distribution of the beam spots on the cornea. In a further embodiment of the method of the present invention, an adjustable mask pattern is inserted in the optical path of the laser source to selectively block certain portions of the laser beams to thereby impinge only selected areas of the cornea.

대표청구항 ▼

[ What is claimed is:] [1.] A non-contact microsurgical apparatus for alleviating visual defects of a patient's eye, comprising:means for generating infrared pulse laser beams having characteristics to be capable of thermo-keratoplasty to a corneal tissue of the eye;means for projecting the laser be

[ What is claimed is:] [1.] A non-contact microsurgical apparatus for alleviating visual defects of a patient's eye, comprising:means for generating infrared pulse laser beams having characteristics to be capable of thermo-keratoplasty to a corneal tissue of the eye;means for projecting the laser beams along an optical axis toward the cornea;said projecting means including:means for converging the laser beams into the corneal tissue;means, including an axicon optical element having a plurality of prismatic facets, for forming simultaneously the laser beams into a plurality of paraxially distributed beams, each of said beams being annularly and dispersively distributed about said optical axis, and shifted from the optical axis with a predetermined shift value, respectively;means for moving the axicon optical element along the optical axis to selectively adjust said shift value of said distributed beams; andmeans for blocking a selected group of said distributed beams before said beams reach the cornea,whereby the distributed beams impinge simultaneously into the corneal tissue as a plurality of spots to shrink said corneal tissue in and around said spots without causing ablation.