Pneumothorax in pulmonary lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a difficult condition to manage. Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) may play a role in diagnosis and treatment of this situation. We present a case of right recurrent pneumothorax due to LAM with TSC in whom VATS was performed for pathological diagnosis and mechanical pleurodesis. The uniq...

Biological tissues (in particular those affected by disease) are inherently complex mixtures of different cell types and matrices. This heterogeneity can complicate the interpretation of molecular biological studies performed on whole-tissue extracts if the precise cellular origin of the molecules being tested is not known. Laser-assisted microdissection (LAM) has emerged as a leading histologi...

Lasers have proven to be among the most promising tools for micromachining because they can process features down to the size of the laser wavelength (smaller than 1 micrometer) and they provide a non-contact technology for machining. The demand for incorporating in-situ diagnostics technology into the micromachining environment is driven by the increasing need for producing micro-parts of high...

The purpose of this work was to fabricate zirconia copings from fully sintered Y-TZP blocks using a Nd:YVO4 nanosecond laser in order to avoid complicated procedures using conventional CAD/CAM systems. To determine the most appropriate power level of a Nd:YVO4 laser, cuboid fully sintered Y-TZP specimens were irradiated at six different average power levels. One-way ANOVAs for the average surfa...

This paper presents the research and development of a hybrid rapid manufacturing process being developed at the University of Missouri-Rolla. This process includes a laser deposition and a 5axis CNC milling system. By combining laser deposition and machining processes, the resulting hybrid process can provide greater build capability and better accuracy and surface finish. The hybrid process ca...

Pulsed laser machining offers many unique capabilities that continuous-wave (CW) laser machining cannot. In pulsed laser machining, however, the additional process parameters of peak power, pulse frequency and pulse duration make it more difficult to find and fine tune a suitable operation window. This becomes harder in micromachining applications where tolerance of inaccuracy is smaller. How t...

This paper describes laser-based layered manufacturing processes for embedding optical fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) in metal structures to develop cutting tools with embedded sensors. FBG is a type of optical fiber that is used for the measurement of parameters manifesting as the changes of strain or temperature. The unique features of FBGs have encouraged their widespread use in structural meas...

objective: the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of laser assisted hatching on the development and quality of vitrified-warmed 4-cell stage mouse embryos. materials and methods: the vitrified-warmed 4-cell mouse embryos were divided into two groups: control group (without laser assisted hatching) and experiment group (with laser assisted hatching). all embryos in both groups were ...

This paper presents a Laser Additive Manufacturing Process Planning (LAMPP) being developed at the University of Missouri-Rolla. The off-line planning recognizes difficult-to-build features from an STL file, selects optimal part orientation and building directions based on the skeleton information of the object geometry, and optimizes the sub-process sequences for deposition and machining. Duri...