For effective medical treatment processes, to understand the evolution of thermal responses in the biological tissues is important. Therefore, a non-Fourier bio-heat transfer equation, which considers the second-order effects in thermal lagging, was developed and used to investigate the variation of temperature in a laser-irradiated biological tissue. And then, thermal damage in the tissue was assessed with the rate process equation. Because the non-Fourier bio-heat transfer equation involves the mixed-derivative terms and the high-order derivatives of temperature with respect to time, there are mathematical difficulties for solving the present problem. A hybrid numerical scheme based on Laplace transform was employed. For an advance understand, the results with the non-linear effects of phase lag times are compared with the results with the linear effects. The non-linear effects of phase lag times would enhance the behavior of non-Fourier heat transfer. The diffusion-like feature of heat transfer would assist heat energy expanding and reduce thermal damage. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.