1. Means for isolating esophageal lumen tissue from contact with fluids, said means comprising a liner which is applied to said tissue to cover said tissue on at least one of the inside and the outside of said lumen.
2. Means as in claim 1 wherein said liner is a barrier and comprises a complete or partial opening to allow devices to go through the esophageal wall to a target outside the esophageal wall after the liner and the esophageal wall have been penetrated to create an opening.
3. Means as in claim 2 where said liner has a pre-formed location for creation of a hole to allow for passage through said liner.
4. Means as in claim 3 wherein a valve communicates with said hole, wherein said valve mechanism can be operated during a procedure affecting at least one of said esophageal tissue, and other tissue accessible through said hole.
5. Means as in claim 1 wherein said liner has a closed distal end.
6. Means as in claim 1 wherein said liner is affixed to said tissue by at least one attachment means.
7. Means as in claim 6 wherein the attachment means comprise at least one of vacuum, mechanical force, balloon inflation, welding, suturing, adhesives, and mechanical devices.
8. Means as in claim 1 wherein said liner has a form comprising an at least partially complete tubular structure.
9. Means as in claim 1 further comprising a side opening mechanism.
10. Means as in claim 1 attached to a deployment device, in which said deployment device is sufficiently long that it may be passed through a patient’s mouth and advanced to at least the distal esophagus, and still have its proximal end outside of the patient’s body.
11. Means as in claim 1 wherein said liner is a barrier and comprises a complete or partial opening to allow devices to go through the esophageal wall to a target outside the esophageal wall after the liner and the esophageal wall have been penetrated to create an opening.
12. Means as in claim 1 wherein the material of said liner is characterized in being one or more of degradable in vivo, antimicrobial in effect, and having more than one layer.
13. An improved method of performing transesophageal surgery, wherein the improvement comprises the provision of a liner affixed to the tissue of the esophagus.
14. The method of claim 13, wherein the liner is a barrier and comprises a complete or partial opening to allow devices to go through the esophageal wall to a target outside the esophageal wall after the liner and the esophageal wall have been penetrated to create an opening.
15. The method of claim 14 wherein the side opening can be closed by spontaneous closure upon withdrawal of an instrument.
16. The method of claim 13 wherein the liner is used in procedures including tumor excision or biopsy; placement of drugs, tissues, and radioactive materials; bronchial biopsy, airway bypass, manipulation of great vessels of the thorax, and pulmonary artery bypass.
17. The method of claim 13 wherein the procedures to be performed are one or more of disk surgery, vertebral column surgery, spinal cord surgery, nerve root surgery, spinal and paraspinal muscle surgery, vascular surgery, oncologic surgery, laser surgery, delivery of energy to tissue, delivery of tissue or genetic material, delivery of surgical devices in general, delivery of cardiac pacemaker or diaphragmatic pace maker, and performance of procedures affecting the esophagus itself including fundoplication, and stomach pacemaker implantation.
18. The method of claim 13 wherein the procedures to be performed are one or more cardiac procedures including mapping, cardiac ablation, valve surgery, closure of septal defects, laser surgery, delivery of energy to the heart and related structure for pacing or to enhance contractility, delivery of drugs or genetic material, and delivery of surgical devices to the heart and related structures.
19. The method of claim 12 wherein the procedures to be performed are one or more of procedures on the lungs, bronchi, nerves, lymphatics, great vessels of the thorax, bony or cartilaginous structures, diaphragm, phrenic nerve, gastroesophageal junction and on the esophagus itself, including the delivery of an esophageal band for satiety or an intra-esophageal valve for reflux.
20. A method for performing surgery in which a liner is placed in a tubular body lumen, including the esophagus, the intestine, the genitourinary (GU) tract, the cardiovascular system, the pulmonary system, the canaliculi of the inner ear, and the lymphatic system, and in which said liner serves as an opening for passage of instruments through the wall of the lumen.
21-41. (canceled)
The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.
1. A method for irradiating a target with a beam of energetic electrically charged particles, comprising:
providing a pattern definition means having a plurality of apertures transparent to said particles,
illuminating said pattern definition means by said beam, which traverses the pattern definition means through said apertures thus forming a patterned beam (pb) having a corresponding plurality of beamlets,
forming said patterned beam into an image on the location of the target, said image comprising the images of at least part of the plurality of apertures, said images of apertures having a first width (w), and
moving said target relative to the pattern definition means along a path within an image plane in which the images of apertures are formed, wherein
during pixel exposure periods the location of said beam image is moved along with the target, the pixel exposure periods having a duration within which the relative movement of the target covers a distance of advance greater than the first width as measured on the target, and
after said pixel exposure periods the location of said beam image is changed with respect to the target, said change of location generally compensating the movement of the location of the beam image during the pixel exposure periods with regard to the location of the pattern definition means.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein said distance of advance is at least a multiple of said first width.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein said distance of advance is smaller than or equal to the distance between neighboring beamlets along the direction of the relative movement.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein the beamlets which are in a same line as measured along the direction of the relative movement of the target form groups of at least one beamlet, the beamlets within each group of more than one beamlet having a distance from each other which, when measured on the target, is an integer multiple of said distance of advance, and wherein the number of said groups is chosen such that the first width multiplied with the number of said groups is equal to or greater than said distance of advance.
5. The method of claim 1, wherein the relative movement of the target is a continuous linear movement within time intervals comprising multiple pixel exposure periods.
6. The method of claim 1, wherein outside of said pixel exposure periods the patterned beam is blanked out in a manner that it is absorbed at an absorbing means before it can reach the target.
7. The method of claim 1, wherein the relative movement of the target during a period of time between the starts of consecutive pixel exposure periods amounts to a second width (Nw) being an integer multiple of said first width.
8. The method of claim 7, wherein the distances of two beamlets which are in a same line as measured along the direction of the relative movement of the target are integer multiples (N\u2032w) of said first width, and at least some of said integer multiples are relatively prime to the integer multiple of said second width.
9. The method of claim 8, wherein said integer multiples differ by one unit.
10. The method of claim 1, wherein the target moves relative to the pattern definition means along a direction generally perpendicular to a propagation direction of the patterned beam.
11. The method of claim 1, wherein the pattern definition means comprises a plurality of electrostatic beamlet deflectors, each of which is associated with a respective aperture of the pattern definition means and is controlled by an individual control signal and is configured to deflect the beamlet traversing the respective aperture by an amount sufficient to deflect the beamlet off its nominal path when activated by the respective control signal, and the apertures of the pattern definition means are controlled in a time-dependent manner according to a pattern to be formed on the target by means of a plurality of said control signals.
12. The method of claim 11, wherein based on a grouping of the apertures into disjoint groups the control signals of the apertures of each group are applied through a common control line in a time-staggered manner.
13. The method of claim 12, wherein the apertures of each group are arranged in the pattern definition means along a direction of orientation across the direction of relative movement of the target.
14. The method of claim 13, wherein the apertures of each group extend over one half of a breadth of an area covered by the apertures of the pattern definition means, as measured across the direction of relative movement of the target, and the control signals are being fed to said area of apertures from two opposite sides.
15. The method of claim 11, wherein data for activating said control signals are fed to and stored in data storage means of the pattern definition means, and said data are individually read out to accordingly activate the control signals.
16. The method of claim 15, using double-ported data storage means, wherein during each pixel exposure period data for controlling the apertures is read out to the control signals through a first port of said storage means, and data concerning the consecutive pixel exposure periods is stored through a second port of said storage means.
17. The method of claim 15, wherein the apertures of the pattern definition means are grouped into groups of mutually redundant apertures, wherein for each group the control signals associated with the apertures of the group are generated from a common signal which is copied to the control signals in turn.
18. The method of claim 17, wherein the common signal is copied to the control signals with respective time delays in correspondence with the spatial offset of the respective apertures along the direction of relative movement of the target.
19. The method of claim 17, wherein the common signal of a group includes information of a gray value to be realized through the apertures belonging to the group, and the gray value is expanded into a sequence of non-active and active control signals, the gray value defining the relative number of non-active control signals over the total number of control signals in the group.
20. The method of claim 19, wherein the expanding of the gray value is performed after reading out the data from the storing means.
21. The method of claim 19, wherein the expanding of the gray value into a sequence of control signals comprises at least one of the following methods: expansion into an evenly-spaced sequence, expansion into a pseudo-random sequence, expansion using linear feedback shift registers, expansion using different offsets for the individual control signals; or a combination thereof.
22. The method of claim 11, wherein the apertures are arranged in at least two parallel arrays, displaced to each other by a distance along the beam, the apertures of the parallel arrays being operated in parallel.