A laser treatment apparatus for performing treatment on a treatment part of a skin by irradiating the part with a laser beam for treatment is disclosed. The apparatus includes a laser output device which outputs the treatment beam; a hand-piece provided with at least a part of an irradiation optical system for irradiating the treatment beam of a predetermined spot size, the hand-piece being held in contact with the skin; a detector which detects a moved position of the hand-piece on the skin; and a controller which controls an ON/OFF state of laser irradiation based on the moved position detected by the detector and information on the spot size.
A laser depilating method for depilating treatment by irradiating a skin surface with a laser beam emitted from a semiconductor laser. A treatment region of the skin surface is treated with a semiconductor laser beam for an irradiation time of 100 msec or more per irradiation while controlling the laser beam so that the energy density when irradiating the skin surface may be in a range of 0.01 1 J/mm.sup.2. Irradiation of the skin surface with a semiconductor laser beam under such a condition provides a more secure and efficient treatment effect of laser depilation. A plurality of semiconductor laser beams are used as necessary to irradiate a wider area of skin surface at a time.
An array of light beams is swept along a main scan direction and dithered in a sub-scan direction to generate a treatment pattern of spots. The array is elongated along the sub-scan direction and the dithering has a travel that is significantly less than the length of the array in the sub-scan direction.
A counter-rotating disk scanner together with another scan mechanism provides two-dimensional optical scanning. The counter-rotating disk scanner includes counter-rotating scan disks that implement the scanning action as they rotate through an optical axis of the system.
An optical pattern generator includes one or more multi-faceted rotating optical elements that introduce an offset that is rotation insensitive. The component that generates the offset is rotationally symmetric around the rotational axis of the optical element. Thus, as the optical element rotates, the effect of the offset component does not change. In addition, rotating optical elements may be designed to counteract unwanted optical effects of each other.
An optical pattern generator includes one or more multi-faceted rotating optical elements that introduce an offset that is rotation insensitive. The component that generates the offset is rotationally symmetric around the rotational axis of the optical element. Thus, as the optical element rotates, the effect of the offset component does not change. In addition, rotating optical elements may be designed to counteract unwanted optical effects of each other.
