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Commercial soft contact lenses have been on researchers' radar to help diagnose and monitor ocular diseases for a while, but they have proven tricky to use as typical sensors and electronics used for such uses normally require a hard, planar surface to function. Something a soft, curved, thin contact lens can't offer.
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Purdue University in the U.S. has created a soft contact lens that's capable of diagnosing and monitoring ocular diseases painlessly.
How?
The way the team managed to develop a soft contact lens for this purpose was by integrating ultrathin, stretchable biosensors with soft commercial contact lenses using wet adhesive bonding.
The biosensors embedded within the contact lenses record retinal activity from the surface of the eye. As these are regular contact lenses, no topical anesthesia to manage pain and safety, as is typical with current clinical diagnosis and monitoring settings, is required.
"This technology will allow doctors and scientists to better understand spontaneous retinal activity with significantly improved accuracy, reliability, and user comfort"
Read the press release about the lens at https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2021/Q1/soft-contact-lenses-eyed-as-new-solutions-to-monitor-ocular-diseases.html
Read the original completed unedited story at
https://interestingengineering.com/new-soft-contact-lens-diagnoses-and-monitors-eye-diseases
Commercial soft contact lenses have been on researchers' radar to help diagnose and monitor ocular diseases for a while, but they have proven tricky to use as typical sensors and electronics used for such uses normally require a hard, planar surface to function. Something a soft, curved, thin contact lens can't offer. A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Purdue University in the U.S. has created a soft contact lens that's capable of diagnosing and monitoring ocular diseases painlessly. How? - The way the team managed to develop a soft contact lens for this purpose was by integrating ultrathin, stretchable biosensors with soft commercial contact lenses using wet adhesive bonding. The biosensors embedded within the contact lenses record retinal activity from the surface of the eye. As these are regular contact lenses, no topical anesthesia to manage pain and safety, as is typical with the current clinical diagnosis and monitoring settings, is required. "This technology will allow doctors and scientists to better understand spontaneous retinal activity with significantly improved accuracy, reliability, and user comfort"