Product Code: JLA_1_3_49

Authors:
Stephen Benson
John Madey
Dept. of Physics, Duke University, Durham NC 27706

Richard Straight
Brett Hooper
Utah Laser Institute, Department of Veterans Affairs and the University of Utah Medical Centers, Salt Lake City, Utah 84148

Recent performance improvements in the free‐electron laser (FEL) have allowed it to operate at a level suitable for most applications in laser medicine. A brief description of the operation of a free‐electron laser will be presented. The performance desired in a medical FEL will be described and the performance to date of the Mark III mid‐infrared to visible FEL at Stanford University will be summarized. A series of experiments, accessing over 400 hours of FEL beam time, have been performed at Stanford as part of the University of Utah Laser Institute medical FEL program using the Mark III for both in vitro and in vivo studies of laser tissue interactions and materials science studies in semiconductor materials. Future improvements to the laser with the purpose of making it suitable for biomedical research and applications will be described.