Fig.2 Representative images of surgical preparation. (A)Ultra-clean surgical preparation area. (B) After the animal model operation (C) Treatment after laser welding.
The wound healing progress was analysed using ImageJ software and calculated based on the wound reduction area using the following equation(1):
\(Healing\ Percentage(\%)=\left(\frac{\text{WA}_{0}-\text{WA}_{t}}{\text{WA}_{0}}\right)\times 100\)% (1)
where WA0is the wound area at the wounding day (day 0) and WAt is the wound area at each respective day.
Results
Macroscopic healing performances in vivo
Figure 3 depicts the laser welding model used in our animal experiment. The procedure begins with making a full-thickness incision on the rats’ back. Following this, we created a solution by combining 5% Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) and 10% normal saline solution which was then applied to the wound every 30 seconds throughout the laser operation. We adopted a Zigzag pattern (as represented in Fig.4(B)) to mimic the Suture technique commonly used in surgical operations. As seen in Fig.3(C), we administered two rounds of laser treatment during the healing process, with the initial procedure on day 0 and the subsequent one on day 3, each session lasting for 3 minutes. We monitored the wound recovery at intervals: 3-, 7-, 14-, and 24-days post-treatment. Although the healing stages were generally completed by the 14th day, we continued observations until day 24 to comprehensively document and analyze all aspects of the healing and prognostic cycles. To probe the laser’s potential in accelerating wound healing in rats and to examine the impacts of varying laser incident angles, we established four groups: control (no treatment), and groups exposed to lasers angled at 90°, 60°, and 30° respectively.