Rox Anderson talks about the laser’s impact in medical advances

Rox Anderson, symposium chair of SPIE Biomedical Optics at Photonics West, talks about the important role of lasers in medicine, from cancer to heart disease and his own specialty, dermatology.

Lasers have dramatically impacted the way disease is detected and treated in modern medicine. From cardiology to cancer, the many types of lasers are valuable tools in the physician’s array of treatment options. With so much research underway, what are the developments being worked on, and what might soon be available to patients for improved treatment?

In this video, R. Rox Anderson gives an overview of the role of the laser in medicine, and discusses prospects for near-term developments. Anderson is Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital. He has chaired numerous conferences for SPIE, and has been Symposium Chair of the Biomedical Optics symposium at SPIE Photonics West each year since 2004. He has published dozens of papers in SPIE Proceedings on photonic treatments for skin cancer.