Laser ablation of atherosclerotic blood vessel tissue under various irradiation conditions.

A quantitative analysis is presented of the destruction of normal wall and atherosclerotic plaque areas of blood vessels by laser radiation. Threshold laser radiant exposure values were measured experimentally in vitro, along with the ablation efficiency for various laser wavelengths and irradiation conditions. Correlations were found between the ablation efficiency and fluence thresholds on the one hand and the optical properties of the blood vessel tissues on the other. Fibrous plaque was demonstrated to be selectively destroyed by the second-harmonic output from a pulsed Nd:YAG laser at lambda = 532 nm.