Noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus

摘要

A noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus and method for marking a cornea of a patient's or donor's eye in transplanting surgery or keratoplasty, and in incising or excising the corneal tissue in keratotomy, and for tissue welding and for thermokeratoplasty. The noncontact laser microsurgical apparatus (10) comprises a laser source (11) and a projection optical system for converting laser beams emitted from the laser source into coaxially distributed beam spots (61) on the cornea (31). The apparatus further includes a multiple-facet prismatic axicon lens system (18) movably mounted for varying the distribution of the beam spots (61) on the cornea. In a further embodiment of the method of the present invention, an adjustable mask pattern (25-28) is inserted in the optical path of the laser source to selectively block certain portions of the laser beams to thereby impinge only selected areas of the cornea.