Google has applied for a patent on a surgical system for removing biological tissue with a laser that delivers electromagnetic radiation. Google first applied for it before Google established the umbrella company Alphabet, which includes the standalone life sciences company that was spun out of the Google X laboratory.
Here’s how the technology is described in the patent’s abstract:
An active tracking system includes an imager configured to image the temperature of a biological tissue and a heating laser configured to heat regions of the biological tissue. The imager locates high-temperature regions of the biological tissue and the heating laser is controlled to point toward target regions of the biological tissue based on the located high-temperature regions.
The active tracking system can be used to control a heating laser to continuously heat a target region of a biological tissue even when the target region moves relative to the heating laser. The active tracking system could allow one or more target regions of a biological tissue to be `tagged` with heat by the heating laser and to be tracked even when the one or more target regions move relative to the heating laser. Devices and methods for operating such active tracking systems are also provided.
This type of technology certainly falls into the “bets” category far outside the classic realm of Google, which includes web search, web browsing, YouTube, and Gmail. Just like Google experiments such as Project Loon for broadcasting Internet from a balloon or the Google self-driving car, this laser surgery technology might not pay off for 10 years or longer than that.
Of course, this is no guarantee that Alphabet will ever release technology anything close to the system documented in this patent.