A light blanket for intraoperative photodynamic therapy.

A novel light source - light blanket composed of a series of parallel cylindrical diffusing fibers (CDF) is designed to substitute the hand-held point source in the PDT treatment of the malignant pleural or intraperitoneal diseases. It achieves more uniform light delivery and less operation time in operating room. The preliminary experiment was performed for a 9cmx9cm light blanket composed of 8 9-cm CDFs. The linear diffusers were placed in parallel finger-like pockets. The blanket is filled with 0.2 % intralipid scattering medium to improve the uniformity of light distribution. 0.3-mm aluminum foil is used to shield and reflect the light transmission. The full width of the profile of light distribution at half maximum along the perpendicular direction is 7.9cm and 8.1cm with no intralipid and with intralipid. The peak value of the light fluence rate profiles per input power is 11.7mW/cm2/W and 8.6mW/cm2/W respectively. The distribution of light field is scanned using the isotropic detector and the motorized platform. The average fluence rate per input power is 8.6 mW/cm2/W and the standard deviation is 1.6 mW/cm2/W for the scan in air, 7.4 mW/cm2/W and 1.1 mW/cm2/W for the scan with the intralipid layer. The average fluence rate per input power and the standard deviation are 20.0 mW/cm2/W and 2.6 mW/cm2/W respectively in the tissue mimic phantom test. The light blanket design produces a reasonably uniform field for effective light coverage and is flexible to confirm to anatomic structures in intraoperative PDT. It also has great potential value for superficial PDT treatment in clinical application.