Essays --

Laser treatment is being employed for several applications including wound healing, bone repair, pain-relief, etc. The basic principle of laser therapy relies on the absorption of photonic energy by molecular photoacceptors (chromophores), leading to a photochemical reaction. This photochemical reaction results in the generation of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) and heat, which are known to play a crucial role in laser-induced damage. This study explores the role of specific heat in affecting laser-induced damage. By using the formula, H = msÃŽ ¸ (H being Heat, M being Mass; S being Specific heat, and ÃŽ ¸ being change in temperature), it was speculated that a change in specific heat would affect rise in temperature and hence cytotoxicity induced by the laser. Therefore, the specific heat of different solutions was measured using a calorimeter-like setup. Once the specific heat of different solutions was determined, cells (HaCaT, Human Skin Epithelial Cells and NOKSI, Normal Oral Keratinocytes) were treated with solutions of varying specific heat capacities and assessed in laser damage. It was observed that in lowering the specific heat by using various cell culture solutions, there is a sharp increase in temperature at lower laser doses, leading to increased damage to cells. Further, a robotic arm is being assembled to characterize the heat dispersion during clinical therapy, with the aim of mimicking manual operator hand motions and helping simulate clinical therapy in further lab experiments. INTRODUCTION There are three primary phases of wound healing—inflammation, tissue formation, and tissue regeneration. It is a dynamic, interactive process involving soluble mediators, blood cells, extracellular matrix, and parenchymal cel... ...of glycerol is indeed cytotoxic. When treating the cells with a 1.7W laser, the 10% FBS solution proved to be the most effective in preserving cell viability, due to its high specific heat capacity. Future goals of this experiment will strive to determine whether the laser-induced killing is through heat, Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) generation, or some other factor. In Aim 2, we were able to capture the precise clinical operator movements in multiple dimensions using the precision 6-axis sensor. We recently completed construction of our robotic arm and are in the process of programming using the clinical data captured with the sensor. This robotic arm concept is expected to greatly stabilize the laser motions, and will certainly be a beneficial and revolutionary application in not only lab experiments, but also experiments dealing with animals, such as mice.