Abstract
The femtosecond laser ablation in biological tissue produces highly fluorescent compounds that are of great significance for intrinsically labelling ablated tissue in vivo and achieving imaging-guided laser microsurgery. In this study, we analyzed the molecular structures of femtosecond laser-ablated tissues using Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy. The results showed that though laser ablation caused carbonization, no highly fluorescent nanostructures were found in the ablated tissues. Further, we found that the fluorescence properties of the newly formed compounds were spatially heterogeneous across the ablation site and the dominant fluorescent signals exhibited close similarity to the tissue directly heated at a temperature of 200 °C. The findings of our study indicated that the new fluorescent compounds were produced via the laser heating effect and their formation mechanism likely originated from the Maillard reaction, a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars in tissue.
Highlights
Laser surgery has been widely used for precise ablation of targeted biological tissues [1]
A femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser (Mira900-S, Coherent) with 140 fs pulse duration was used for two-photon fluorescence excitation and its second harmonic generation (SHG) from a β-barium borate (BBO) crystal was used for single-photon excitation
Our previous work revealed that the laser ablated albumin and biological tissues exhibited similar fluorescence properties, suggesting that the fluorescent compounds in tissues could originate from the interaction between laser and proteins [7]
Summary
Laser surgery has been widely used for precise ablation of targeted biological tissues [1]. Due to the highly localized nonlinear photo-ionization process, femtosecond laser surgery provides a considerably better spatial precision in tissue ablation than that of continuous-wave or long-pulsed irradiation [2]. The results showed that the fluorescent compounds produced by the femtosecond laser are of great significance for intrinsically labelling ablated tissue in vivo. We characterized the fluorescence properties of the femtosecond laser ablated biological samples and found that the fluorescent compounds could originate from the interaction of laser and protein. Their formation mechanisms remain unclear [7]
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