Greetings from Chicago!
I have been lurking on the laser pointer forums for a few weeks now, mostly because my google searches keep leading me back to this site. I have a long-standing interest (and modest personal experience) with medical lasers though a very poor understanding of the physics governing their operation. My background is in medicine/medical research; sadly, my training included scant exposure to the world of optoelectronics.
I would welcome any recommendations re: websites, books, etc. that might help my foundational learning (somewhere on the level of an introductory college course would be divine). Of particular interest to me are yellow/green lasers. I wish to better understand the challenges in creating powerful yellow/green lasers, as they are very useful in clinical medicine. Current options that are powerful enough to generate sufficient fluence for treating vascular lesions, for example, are typically bulky devices that are expensive to maintain (i.e. the 532 nm frequency-doubled Nd:YAG or the 585/595 nm pulsed dye lasers). I understand efforts have been undertaken to create diode lasers in the blue-green-yellow spectra, which may eventually find their way into clinical devices (I hope!).
Thanks for letting me pop in and introduce myself. I look forward to learning from your collective wisdom. Please forgive any future amateurish inquiries; I am riding the steep portion of the learning curve!
I have been lurking on the laser pointer forums for a few weeks now, mostly because my google searches keep leading me back to this site. I have a long-standing interest (and modest personal experience) with medical lasers though a very poor understanding of the physics governing their operation. My background is in medicine/medical research; sadly, my training included scant exposure to the world of optoelectronics.
I would welcome any recommendations re: websites, books, etc. that might help my foundational learning (somewhere on the level of an introductory college course would be divine). Of particular interest to me are yellow/green lasers. I wish to better understand the challenges in creating powerful yellow/green lasers, as they are very useful in clinical medicine. Current options that are powerful enough to generate sufficient fluence for treating vascular lesions, for example, are typically bulky devices that are expensive to maintain (i.e. the 532 nm frequency-doubled Nd:YAG or the 585/595 nm pulsed dye lasers). I understand efforts have been undertaken to create diode lasers in the blue-green-yellow spectra, which may eventually find their way into clinical devices (I hope!).
Thanks for letting me pop in and introduce myself. I look forward to learning from your collective wisdom. Please forgive any future amateurish inquiries; I am riding the steep portion of the learning curve!
