3.1.6. Laser Specifications

Okay, so now let's talk a little bit about some technical specifications. The near infrared laser diode in the center of each Delta device is producing low intensity coherent light and that light is going to be non-damaging biological tissue. In fact, the total amount of power produced by the diode is less than 10 milliwatts. And to give you some comparison of what that means, the power density of the divergent laser beam in the delta is going to be about 1/10 of what is considered potentially damaging to biological tissue. In other words, you're not going to overtreat people or yourself with the delta given any reasonable treatment time. On this chart here, you see the different wavelengths of electromagnetic energy. The visible wavelengths of light are from 400 nanometers to and the laser diode used in the Delta device is producing either 980 nanometers or 905 nanometers as the central wavelength. And this is, like I said, infrared coherent light, so it's outside the visible spectrum, and you won't be able to see it with your naked eye. Okay, let's talk about the shape of the laser beam. On the top picture, you'll see what's called a collimated laser beam. The lights focused with optics and stays in a parallel beam as it travels away from the source. The divergent beam, the one on the bottom on the other hand, spreads in a cone-like shape as it leaves the source. In the Delta device, we use a divergent beam laser. It spreads in a cone of 35 by 10 degrees. And lastly, we'll touch on the operating mode of the laser used in the Delta device. A continuous wave operating mode means the diode emits light continuously, but it's also modulated and this means that it's switched on for half the time and off for half the time as you see shown here in the picture. Now, please note this is very different from super pulse lasers. These lasers emit extremely short but powerful bursts of light. These pulses could last from only perhaps a billionth of a second and it have a peak power of around 50,000 milliwatts or even more in some cases. In COMRA therapy, we use a much more gentle acting continuous wave with on and off modulation.