Bright future for research centre with laser technology

Rapid advances in the manufacturing process have led to a boom in the use of laser technology for productionline and automation processes. Now a laser research centre based at NUI Galway is establishing itself as a centre of excellence for the application of laser technology to medical devices.

Following an approach from Arterial Vascular Engineering - one of the world's largest medical device manufacturers - the National Centre for Laser Applications recently employed laser treatment to develop an innovative manufacturing process for use in conducting minimally invasive coronary surgery.

Arterial Vascular Engineering, which recently took over the activities of C. R. Bard in Galway, specialises in the production of equipment for minimally invasive surgery, including coronary angioplasty. The National Centre for Laser Applications was charged with developing a means of making this process safer through the application of laser technology.

Coronary surgery can currently be carried out by making an incision in the patient's wrist and passing a rigid tube along the vascular system to the heart. At the end of the tube a small inflated balloon gets pushed beyond any blockage, and pulled back to clear it away. In the case of a collapsed artery, the balloon is surrounded by a small cage, which remains as an arterial support after the balloon has been deflated and removed.

The US Food and Drug Administration authority stipulates stringent requirements and a high level of reliability on products as concise as this. The problem Arterial Vascular Engineering faced was to develop a system which enabled the drilling of tiny, precise holes in the rigid tube. Conventional techniques like pinhole drilling proved unsuitable, so it turned to the National Centre for Laser Applications to see how laser could be employed. In a project lasting nine months, the process moved from the concept phase to prototype fabrication and testing to final process workstation development.

Now the workstation is on the factory floor at Arterial Vascular Engineering in Galway, which is producing the new product for export markets all over the world. According to Mr David Stern, director of radiology research and development at the Galway facility, the added functionality of the new product poses a potentially lucrative market opportunity for his company. It plans to transfer the entire laser process to its parent company in the US early in the new year.

Because Arterial Vascular Engineering is in the process of securing patent protection on the product, the National Centre for Laser Applications will not disclose the details of how its laser process has been used to improve the tube. However, according to Mr Tony Flaherty, a senior research scientist at the national laser centre, the new mechanism will "significantly increase its reliability, and eliminate the possibility of failure".

Laser technology allows the projection of very controlled amounts of energy into a very small area, enabling high precision cutting, welding and drilling, ideal for developing smaller and smaller devices allowing greater access to obscure parts of the human body. Mr Flaherty believes his company can gain directly from its innovations, by shifting away from developing products on a contract basis for other companies and, instead, licensing the technology to clients while retaining the intellectual property rights. There are also increasing opportunities for grant-aided development. The Arterial Vascular Engineering development cost about £26,000, and was 50 per cent funded by Enterprise Ireland's applied research grant scheme.

"There are long-term benefits to gain from the technology being developed here. In principle NUI Galway is interested in campus company spin-offs based around contract research and development for specific industries," says Mr Flaherty.

Established in 1989, the National Centre for Laser Applications operates on about £200,000 per year, with funding divided evenly between industry and State sponsorship. There are 10 people with backgrounds in chemistry and physics working on a fulltime basis, and in the last four years the centre has seen annual increases in business of more than 50 per cent. This reflects how laser technology has reached an acceptable level of maturity, with sales worldwide growing by 25 per cent each year. The Arterial Vascular Engineering product is the third laser-based technology to be transferred by the laser company to Irish industry this year. It recently completed a successful collaboration with Irish company, Creganna, which specialises in the supply of parts to high-technology manufacturers in the electronics and health-care fields. The national laser centre worked closely with the company to develop a laser process for accurately stripping polymer coatings in localised areas from steel tubes. According to Mr Niall Quinn, director of production at Creganna: "The process has given us a competitive advantage in terms of quality and productivity. The adoption of laser technology is now a key strategy in our plans for future expansion of the quality and range of our services."

The centre has also been involved in international collaborations, perhaps most notably with Aerospatiale, the French manufacturer of Concorde and Airbus. Because polymers - increasingly used to replace metal alloy in airframe manufacture - have to be treated with adhesives via a cumbersome process, the national laser centre devised a way to apply laser technology to polymer surfaces. This eliminated the use of solvents in the process.