The electronics for this medical laser are based on a 3U CompactPCI® system controlled by an F7N single-board computer powered by a Pentium® III CPU. An extension card directly plugged to the CPU board makes the I/O available which is required by the application. It includes graphics, Fast Ethernet, USB, 2 COMs, keyboard/mouse and floppy disk controller. The on-board CompactFlash® card stores the application software.

Medical laser devices are in use for an increasing number of different kinds of operations. Laser skin treatment is applied in cosmetic skin surgery and offers patients the positive results of ablative resurfacing with the low-impact benefits of non-ablative therapies. In this application a new generation of lasers produces tiny, microscopic sites of thermal impact separated by areas of unaffected, healthy tissue. The spared healthy tissue between treatment zones contains viable cells that promote rapid renewal of the outer skin layers. At the same time, each microthermal wound penetrates between 400-700 microns into the dermis to remodel collagen. Thus, the new laser strives to achieve the skin improvements obtained with conventional CO2 laser resurfacing but without the associated side effects or downtime.