There is a new soft contact lens technology that can help diagnose certain eye conditions soon to be implemented for clinical trials. Researchers at Purdue University along with biomedical, chemical and mechanical engineers, and clinicians have developed this new technology. They have developed soft contact lenses to be used as a bioinstrumentation tool to obtain information that is important to diagnose underlying ocular health conditions.
By using the soft contact lens, it can be a painless way to discover early ocular diseases, such as glaucoma. It has always been a goal to utilize contact lenses in biomedical platforms.
Currently, soft contact lenses couldn’t be used as sensors because technology to fabricate them had to use a rigid, planar surface. This proved to be incompatible with a contact lens that has a soft, curved shape.
The team has created the use of ultrathin, stretchable biosensors that are seamless. They used wet adhesive bonding with soft commercial contact lenses to embed the biosensors. They are then able to deliver a record of the electrophysiological retinal activity from the cornea. In the past this has not been done without requiring topical anesthesia for pain.
Using this new technology, doctors and scientists would better be able to understand ocular activity with greatly improved reliability and accuracy with no pain to the patient.
To view the original scientific study click below:
