Mechanical engineering Assistant Professor Adela Ben-Yakar at The University of Texas at Austin has developed a laser "microscalpel" that destroys a single cell while leaving nearby cells intact, which could improve the precision of surgeries for cancer, epilepsy and other diseases.

Laser surgery to correct vision problems has been in use since the early 1990s. Photorefractive Keratotomy (PRK) is typically used to correct low to moderate myopia, while laser in-situ keratomileusis (LASIK) is preferred for high myopia corrections.

From cosmetic to brain surgery, intense beams of coherent light are gradually replacing the steel scalpel for many procedures. Despite this increasing popularity, there is still a lot that scientists do not know about the ways in which laser light interacts with living tissue.