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Performance
of 50 Completed ATP Projects
Status
Report - Number 2
NIST SP 950-2
Chapter
4 - Electronics, Computer Hardware & Communications
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Cynosure,
Inc.
Harnessing Cheap Diode Lasers to Power
a Low-Cost Surgical Laser
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| Surgery
is performed tens of millions of times a year in the United States,
and it is usually a painful, risky procedure for the patient. It is
also risky for the surgeon in terms of malpractice liability. Patients,
surgeons, and health insurance companies are constantly looking for
new, less invasive procedures to replace conventional surgery. Laser
surgery is a prime candidate. One problem that limits this approach,
however, is the price of equipment. A typical 100-watt surgical laser
costs about $700 to $1,000 per watt of laser output, or about $70,000
to $100,000. |
COMPOSITE
PERFORMANCE SCORE
(Based on a four star rating.)
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Photomicrograph
of an array of multilevel diffractive lenses, fabricated with a 193
nanometer excimer laser. |
A Laser for Lower
Cost, Less Invasive Surgery
This ATP project with Cynosure, founded in 1991, was designed to develop
a smaller, less expensive laser source for surgery and other applications.
The idea behind the Cynosure laser system — which was expected to
sell for about $150 to $200 per watt of laser light delivered at the end
of a surgical optical fiber — is based on harnessing the light from
an array of 200 semiconductor, or diode, lasers. The problem with this
approach in the past has been the difficulty of exactly aligning all 200
beams before they go into the diffractive optics transformer that collimates
them into one tight, powerful beam. Minor inaccuracies in the alignment
of the individual lasers can greatly degrade the performance of the system.
Cynosure’s innovation
was to develop an automated system to custom-mill arrays of 200 corrective
lenses to match arrays of 200 diode lasers. In such a system, diagnostic
equipment measures the alignment error of each laser beam and feeds the
results to a computer, which drives a powerful laser that mills the lens
array in less than 10 minutes. The result is a customized lenslet array
that corrects the beams before they enter the transformer.
Barriers to Commercialization
Cynosure successfully designed and built a customized lenslet array to
correct the beams from an array of 200 diode lasers. The researchers,
however, failed to build a system that could generate the target power
level — 20 watts of laser light from a medical optical fiber —
because the company was unable to secure an adequate, low-cost supply
of a low-tech component: a collimating array. The intended supplier, which
was the sole source of the collimating array, stopped making the device
and sold its production division. The new owner also chose not to produce
the array.
To make use of some
of the technology developed in the ATP project, Cynosure is collaborating
with the Lincoln Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
using about $100,000 from the Small Business Technology Transfer Program
to develop a
low-cost diode-laser system for treatment of arrhythmia for the National
Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The company is proposing to extend the
scope of the project to include other conditions, besides arrhythmia,
that can be treated with minimally invasive surgery. This new project
is based in part on the demonstration that the ATP-funded technology,
as modified by the company, is capable of delivering 10 watts of power
into a 100-micron fiber-optic tube.
Alternative Approach
After the ATP project, Cynosure investigated alternative techniques, based
on commercially available components, to channel the many beams from diode-laser
arrays into a surgical optical fiber. The company found this can be done
by grinding a hyperbolic lens onto the end of a small optical fiber, fitting
one such fiber to each diode and stacking the fiber-coupled diodes into
a two-dimensional array, as the ATP proposal had suggested. The fibers
take the place of the diffractive optics in the proposed ATP laser system,
with the tiny lenses directing the output from the diode array into a
single fiber.
The company’s
switch to a different technological approach using readily available parts
to concentrate the laser beams allowed commercialization to resume. Commercial
lasers are now scheduled to be available in the near future.
Mission Accomplished
Lower-cost, higher-power medical diode lasers are a necessity for minimally
invasive surgery, and it is said that necessity is the mother of invention.
Cynosure invented the approach using fiber-coupled lasers, which are manufactured
using standard optical fabrication methods and readily available components.
The company expects this approach will not only reduce the cost of medical
lasers but will also cost less than the diffractive optics-combiner approach
envisioned by the ATP project.
By significantly reducing
the cost of surgical lasers, the Cynosure technology would enable wider
use of minimally invasive surgery, reducing hospitalization times and
lowering health-care costs. For example, gall bladder removal by conventional
surgery requires a four-to-six-inch incision that results in four to seven
days of hospitalization and a month of recovery time. When the removal
is done by laser via a fiberoptic scope inserted through a small incision
(a procedure already in widespread use), the patient is hospitalized for
only two or three days and recovers much faster. Less costly medical lasers
would likely increase gall bladder removal by laser.
Funding from the ATP
allowed Cynosure to perform research and development work it would otherwise
have been unable to do. The award enabled it to hire highly qualified
optical physicists to conduct the research on diffractive optics, and
to develop the technical capability needed for future manufacture of diffractive
optics devices. Cynosure is currently considering licensing this technology
to a company whose core business is diffractive optics. In addition, the
availability of highly sophisticated optical diagnostic equipment allowed
Cynosure to better understand and test the fiber-coupled equipment it
is developing for the commercial sector.
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Project
Highlights
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PROJECT:
To design an optical system for collecting, aligning, and combining
beams from an array of semiconductor lasers into one powerful beam,
an achievement that will lead to the development of smaller, cheaper
lasers for surgery and other applications.
Duration: 5/1/1993 — 4/30/1995
ATP Number: 92-01-0136
FUNDING (in
thousands):
| ATP |
$1,965
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49%
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| Company |
2,067
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51%
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| Total |
$4,032
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ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
Cynosure designed and built a fault-tolerant optical system for
a diode-laser array but was unable during the project to obtain
a laser beam with the targeted 20 watts of output from a medical
optical fiber. Later, the company achieved this goal with an alternative
approach built, in part, on the knowledge developed during the ATP
project. The company:
- received
one patent for technology related to the ATP project:
“Fault-Tolerant Optical System Using Diode Laser Array”
(No. 5,369,659: filed 12/7/1993, granted 11/29/1994);
- published
a paper on its research findings;
- was ranked
number 112 in the 1996 Inc. magazine list of the 500 fastest-growing
private companies in America;
- increased
its sales from $626,000 in 1991 to more than $23 million in 1997;
and
- is collaborating
with Lincoln Laboratory and using funds from the Small Business
Technology Transfer Program to develop a low-cost diode-laser
system for treatment of arrhythmia, based on the ATP technology,
for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
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CITATIONS
BY OTHERS OF PROJECT’S PATENTS: See Figure 4.5.
COMMERCIALIZATION
STATUS:
Commercialization was stymied by Cynosure’s inability to secure
the supply of a critical part at an affordable price. Since the
ATP project ended, the company has taken a different, less-sophisticated
approach to building a commercializable medical laser, using its
own funds. That device has achieved the 20-watt ATP goal, and the
company is scaling it to achieve 200 watts output. Commercial lasers
are scheduled for market introduction in the near future.
OUTLOOK:
The benefits originally expected from commercialization of the ATP-funded
technology should be realized via commercialization of the alternative
technology that built on the technical knowledge developed in the
ATP project.
Composite
Performance Score:
COMPANY:
Cynosure, Inc.
10 Elizabeth Drive
Chelmsford, MA 01824
Contact:
Horace Furumoto
Phone:
(978) 256-4200
Number of Employees: 30 at project start, 120 at the end
of 1997
Informal collaborator: Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Lincoln Laboratory
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Return to Table
of Contents or go to next section.
Date created: April
2002
Last updated:
April 12, 2005
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