Surgery: light – thermal – and electrical application – Light – thermal – and electrical application – Light application
Patent
1998-12-17
2000-11-14
Dvorak, Linda C. M.
Surgery: light, thermal, and electrical application
Light, thermal, and electrical application
Light application
607 89, 606 10, 606 12, 606 13, A61B 1818
Patent
active
061464104
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a device for the photodynamic treatment of living beings and of the organs thereof, for which a light source, a switching device and a power source are provided.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The photodynamic treatment of living beings and of the organs thereof depends on the fact that biophotochemical effects are initiated in the body by specific dyes and these effects accumulate, for example, in cancerous tissues at a 10 to 30-fold concentration, referred to the healthy tissue. This can then lead to the release in the cells of such cancerous tissues of singlet oxygen, which selectively destroys the cancer cells.
In the known devices, the treatment is carried out in a way, that by the light source, the light is emitted into the tissue for an empirically determined time without a carefully directed control.
It has now been found experimentally that, during the emission of the light, the optical tissue properties and the tissue-photon interactions continually alter in different narrow spectral band ranges. The tissues contain a number of dyes which react on the photons impinging in a narrow spectral band wavelength range and this then gives rise to the biophotochemical processes. The therapeutic effect is hence totally dependent on the dye concentration, the optical properties of the diseased tissue, the light intensity applied, the spectral composition of the light and the general condition of the patient; the different wavelengths of the light as well as the light intensity are of great importance here.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The invention is based on the object of developing a device of the above-mentioned type wherein, besides the wavelength of the light or the spectral wavelength range, the light intensity is also taken into account.
This is achieved according to the invention by the feature that the light source can be controlled with respect to its intensity and/or spectral bands by means of a computer in order to obtain a given spectral pattern (photon energy pattern), preferably a sequence of patterns. It thereby becomes possible to accommodate the radiant intensity and the wavelength or the spectral structure to the respective biophotochemical processes, and at the same time a spectral pattern which is variable over time can also be emitted into the tissue.
By a spectral pattern is meant here a spectrally structured light which is variable over time and consists of one or more spectral bands. The simplest spectral pattern can be characterised by a four-dimensional vector wherein the vector coordinates are the energy of the band, the band width, the average band wavelength and the time. These four vectors are preset for the light source by an appropriate computer, the commuter being preset in accordance with the individual data.
To achieve the preset spectral pattern, the computer may advantageously be provided with an expert data bank. The computer consequently contains key features already determined on the basis of clinical practice, so that resort can be made to clinically proven spectral patterns for the treatment of certain diseases and a possibly lengthy experimentation is therefore unnecessary. To determine whether the spectral pattern emitted onto the tissue displays the desired action, the computer can be connected to sensors for the acquisition of data for the tissue being treated. The computer can be provided with a comparator to compare the data bank acquired by the sensor or sensors with that of the expert data bank, by which means it can immediately be determined whether the tissue reacts with the spectral pattern in the desired manner. The sensors can be connected to a working data bank which processes the determined data for the comparator, the working data bank being connected to the expert data bank. It is thereby possible to correct the expert data bank with respect to the data signalled back from the tissue, in order to attain an optimal effect of the device tailored to the respective individual.
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Hofmann Gunther
Nagypal Tibor
Dvorak Linda C. M.
Yarnell Bryan K.
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