Patent ID: 7367969

Claim:
A method of surgical material removal from a body by optical-ablation with controlled pulse energy from a fiber amplifier, comprising: inputting an ablation-threshold-pulse-energy-for-material-being-ablated signal; generating a series of wavelength-swept-with-time pulses using an optical oscillator; controlling pulse energy based on the ablation-threshold-pulse-energy-for-material-being-ablated signal either by selecting pulses from the oscillator generated series of wavelength-swept-with-time pulses, wherein the fraction of pulses selected can be controllably varied to give a selected pulse repetition rate that is a fraction of the oscillator repetition rate, or by passing electrical current through at least one pump diode to generate pumping light, optically pumping the fiber amplifier with the pumping light, and controlling pump diode current; amplifying the wavelength-swept-with-time pulse with the fiber-amplifier; time-compressing the amplified pulse and illuminating a portion of the body with the time-compressed optical pulse, whereby controlling the pulse selection and/or the pump diode current controls the pulse energy; and determining a volumetric removal rate from the pulse energy and the threshold-pulse-energy-for-material-being-ablated signal.