Patent ID: 6641578
Filing Date: 2003-11-04
Classification: A61B

Abstract:
A laser treatment apparatus for performing treatment by irradiating a skin of a patient with a laser beam for treatment, the apparatus including:an irradiation unit including a laser source which emits the treatment laser beam and an irradiation optical system which delivers the treatment laser beam from the laser source to a treatment part of the skin to irradiate the part; a skin color detection unit including an imaging element which takes a picture image of the treatment part of the skin to be irradiated and an image processing section which detects a color of the imaged part of the skin; a memory which stores data on a plurality of different darknesses of skin color and data on a plurality of different values of irradiation condition associated individually with each other, the irradiation condition including at least one of output power of the treatment laser beam, irradiation time, irradiation density and irradiation energy, the irradiation condition value being lower as the skin color darkness becomes darker; and a control section which automatically determines a value of the irradiation condition corresponding to the darkness of the skin color that is newly detected based on the data stored in the memory so that, when no data on darkness substantially the same as the newly detected darkness is in the stored data, the irradiation condition value corresponding to the most similar darkness which is darker than the newly detected darkness is determined.