Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu.edu!bu-cs!buengc!bph
From: bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Can lasers be deflected electroMAGNETically?
Message-ID: <5169@buengc.BU.EDU>
Date: 1 Jan 90 19:09:58 GMT
References: <6220004@hpcupt1.HP.COM> <1989Dec29.211335.2414@utzoo.uucp> <13100@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Reply-To: bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton)
Followup-To: sci.electronics
Organization: Boston Univ. Col. of Eng.
Lines: 22

In article <13100@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> kimf@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (Kim Flowers) writes:
>Would it be possible to cause a laser beam to scan by deflecting it
>off or through a piezoelectric (?) mirror or lense?  If so, by how much?

Yes.  It's been done a number of times, apparently.  I first saw
a description of it in Annals of Biomedical Engineering a couple
of years ago.  The researchers were using the laser to illuminate
a lattice of points on the surface of electroactive tissue (e.g.
heart muscle) that had been coated with an electroluminescent
fluid.  As the muscle contracts, the myoelectric dipole wavefront
propagates across the surface, activating the fluid, and when the
laser hits the fluid its fluorescence indicates the potential
at that point.  Using a piezoelectric element (I don't remember
whether they used it as a refractor or reflector) meant they
could scan something like 32 or 64 points on a sizeable piece
of tissue in some very short time, milliseconds or microseconds,
or something.

				--Blair
				  "Bibliographies?
				   We don' need no steenking
				   bibliographies..."