title: Reflectance as an indirect measurement of the extent of laser-induced coagulation.
abstract: Two-dimensional reflectance images and surface thermal distributions were recorded during argon laser induced coagulation. During laser irradiation, coagulated egg yolk formed a white lesion. The whiteness, or reflectance caused by backscattering of light from the forming lesion, would be measured after a short delay from the onset of laser irradiation. In the experiments which covered exposure time from 4.5 to 17.0 s, we found that it started slowly, the reflectance increased rapidly once the surface temperature of the lesion reached approximately 90 degrees C. After this rapid rise, the reflectance began to taper off until no change in reflectance was recorded. There was a 0.98 correlation between lesion diameter measured from a two dimensional reflectance image and the lesion diameter that was measured microscopically. There was a 0.92 correlation between reflectance at the center of the lesion and microscopically measured depth of coagulation at the same point. However, the correlation between microscopically measured coagulation depth and width was only 0.88.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas, Austin 78712.
authors.forename: Y L
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Markow
authors.forename: H G
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Rylander
authors.forename: W S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Weinberg
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Welch
mesh_terms: D004530:Egg Yolk; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008028:Light Coagulation / Q000379:methods*; D055095:Optics and Photonics; D013696:Temperature