Page 136 - LASERS & IPLS IN MEDICAL/AESTHETIC APPLICATIONS

To calibrate a laser:
Chapter 1 – Fundamentals of Medical/Aesthetic Lasers and IPLs v1.1
Appendix 4 – Calibrating your laser or IPL
Most lasers used today need to be calibrated. This means that the energy which is applied to the skin surface is a known quantity. You might set a particular number on your laser display, say 300 mJ. But that does NOT necessarily mean that 300 mJ is actually delivered to the skin!!
So, you need to check this using a meter and a proper calibration process. We made a short video showing how to calibrate a laser –
It is quite straightforward calibrating a laser, if you have the correct meter. You must use a meter which is designed for the laser in question in terms of both wavelength and applied power. If you use the wrong meter, you will likely destroy the head – an expensive mistake!
1. Set the laser to the lowest energy output
2. Fire the laser energy at some appropriate ‘burn’ paper
3. Fire a pulse into the meter head and note the measurement
4. Repeat this a number of times (typically three or four is
sufficient)
5. Increase the laser output setting
6. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4
7. Repeat step 5
8. Repeat step 6
By the point you should have a set of laser inputs with their corresponding outputs and a bunch of burn spots.
Average the output energy values to obtain a single value These are your ‘measured output energies’
Measure the spot diameters for each input level Calculate their areas (in cm2, usually)
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Chapter 1 LEVEL A Fundamentals of Lasers/IPLs
© The Laser-IPL Guys 2021