Technology evolving to help zap out unwanted tattoos.

Byline: Melissa Dribben

PHILADELPHIA _ Given that it is human nature to live to regret, the permanence of tattoos is a problem.

Marriages break up, and the ex still abides on the divorced bicep. Gang members find religion. A forked-tongue lizard on the ankle sends the wrong message when competing for clerkships with a judge.

"Saturday Night Live" recently did a spoof ad for tattoo vanishing cream featuring a mother with a tattoo leering from the top of her jeans as she trotted her kids out to the school bus. In time-lapse photography, a "Pretty Lady" tattoo sagged into "Pretty Sad."

Truth in fake advertising.

The mainstreaming of tattoos over the last decade has spawned a new generation of parents and professionals with regrets about their indelible markers. And technology is evolving to help them.

Nicole Fedeli, a school counselor in Voorhees, N.J., says that she was 21 when she had a dolphin tattooed on her ankle. Four years later she added a lizard on the top of her foot. "I thought they were cool at the time," Fedeli says. Now 30, she says, "As you get older and go to nicer places, they just don't look classy."

Patients like Fedeli are increasingly common in the offices of laser surgeons.

"The interest in tattoo removal has increased ... commensurate with the number of people with tattoos," says Roy Geronemus, director of the Laser & Skin Surgery Center of New York and president of the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery.

Doctors report three main categories of patients who want their tattoos…