Patent ID: 7143769

Claim:
A method of surgical material removal from a body by optical-ablation with controlled pulse energy, comprising the steps of: utilizing an optical oscillator in the generation of a series of wavelength-swept-with-time pulses; passing electrical current through at least one pump diode to generate pumping light; optically pumping an optical amplifier using the pumping light; amplifying the wavelength-swept-with-time pulses using the optical amplifier to produce amplified pulses; measuring an energy of the amplified pulses; controlling pump diode current in order to vary the pulse energy of amplified pulses; time-compressing the amplified pulses using a compressor to produce time-compressed amplified pulses; illuminating a portion of the body with the time-compressed amplified pulses; and using more than one optical amplifiers in a mode in which amplified pulses from a first of the optical amplifiers are delayed such that they arrive one or more nanoseconds after amplified pulses from a second of the optical amplifiers, to enable control of ablation rate independent of pulse energy.