
Proceedings Paper
Green’s function representation of laser induced thermal dynamics and determination of thermal criteria for optically induced neural activationFormat | Member Price | Non-Member Price |
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Paper Abstract
Infrared nerve stimulation (INS) is rapidly becoming an important tool for basic research and a promising new clinical
technology to selectively activate nerves to restore function, map the nervous system, and perform diagnostic
procedures. To the best of our understanding, the mechanism of stimulation is photothermal; thus, describing the laserinduced
heat distribution is fundamental to determining the relationship between stimulation pulse and neural
response. This work develops both a framework describing the time evolution of the heat distribution induced by
optical fluence and a novel method to extract thermal criteria for neural activation. We are first concerned with the
general problem of describing the temperature distribution in a homogenous medium. To this end, we determine a
Green’s function solution to the heat diffusion equation and convolve it with the optical fluence. This provides a
general solution to the thermal problem of interest in the form of a single integral over time. Other useful closed form
solutions can be determined for interesting special cases. This pursuit also yields an expression for the thermal
relaxation time, which provides a rigorous description of thermal confinement for INS applications. The insight we
gain from this framework allows us to extract thermal criteria for neural activation from experimental data. Our work
provides both insight into the mechanism for stimulation and understanding sufficient to aid in the development of INS
devices. Thermal criteria values will prove useful for choosing parameters such as spot size, pulse width, stimulation
spacing, and stimulation depth in future INS applications.
Paper Details
Date Published: 15 February 2013
PDF: 19 pages
Proc. SPIE 8579, Optical Interactions with Tissue and Cells XXIV, 857908 (15 February 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2007059
Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8579:
Optical Interactions with Tissue and Cells XXIV
E. Duco Jansen; Robert J. Thomas, Editor(s)
PDF: 19 pages
Proc. SPIE 8579, Optical Interactions with Tissue and Cells XXIV, 857908 (15 February 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2007059
Show Author Affiliations
Bryan Norton, Lockheed Martin Aculight (United States)
Meghan Bowler, Lockheed Martin Aculight (United States)
Vanderbilt Univ. (United States)
Vanderbilt Univ. (United States)
Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8579:
Optical Interactions with Tissue and Cells XXIV
E. Duco Jansen; Robert J. Thomas, Editor(s)
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