Developed by a multidisciplinary team of health engineers and researchers from Purdue University and Indiana University’s School of Optometry, the new intelligent soft contact lens technology is designed to collect critical intraocular pressure measurements over a 24-hour period as a means of detecting glaucoma. (Photo by Purdue University/Rebecca McElhaw)
WEST Lafayette, Indiana — Purdue University biomedical engineer Chi Hwan Lee is aiming to develop specialized smart soft contact lenses that can accurately measure intraocular pressure (IOP) in people’s eyes, which could be the final step in preventing glaucoma-related blindness.
A research team led by Lee, Leslie A. Geddes Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, has developed a new eye technology to more conveniently and accurately monitor patients’ IOP measurements continuously.
According to the Glaucoma Research Foundation, this technology is another option for ophthalmologists to detect glaucoma, which can steal vision without early warning signs or pain and affects more than 80 million people worldwide.
The only known modifiable risk factor is a decrease in a person’s intraocular pressure, which is difficult to control over a long period of time, especially during sleep.
Although check-ups can be done in specialized rooms and home monitoring systems are available, they have their limitations. For example, measures in the office are time-consuming, while current home technologies are complex, inconvenient, and do not collect enough data in the right amount of time or over a long enough period of time for experts to use the information appropriately to optimize processing. solutions.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, highlights the new technology. The study compared Purdue’s technology to the current gold standard and other home monitoring systems, and examined how Purdue’s technology collects important IOP measurements over a 24-hour period, even while you sleep.
The technology was developed by multidisciplinary engineers and health researchers from Purdue University’s School of Engineering and Veterinary Medicine and Indiana University’s School of Optometry.
“The greatest increase in intraocular pressure usually occurs when people are lying down, and nighttime intraocular pressure is usually 10 to 20 percent higher than daytime intraocular pressure. Even if measurements in the clinic or at home during the day show normal intraocular pressure, vision loss can occur during sleep without the knowledge of the patient Materials science.
Li has been working on this technology for 6 years and specializes in sticktronics, which are stickers that use electronic or smart technology. His lab is developing wearable biomedical devices that can continuously monitor chronic disease or health conditions in an unobtrusive manner.
Dr. Pete Kollbaum, professor and associate dean for research at the Indiana University School of Optometry and director of the school’s Borish Eye Research Center, has been working with Lee since 2019. The Kollbaum Clinical Optics Research Laboratory’s contact lens technology team assisted in human clinical trials and provided feedback to improve the design.
Some modern wearable sphygmomanometers or devices that measure intraocular pressure are equipped with integrated circuit chips, which can lead to an increase in thickness and rigidity compared to conventional commercial soft contact lenses, which in many cases can cause discomfort to the patient. Lee’s version is different.
“To meet this unmet need, we have developed unique smart soft contact lenses based on various commercial brands of soft contact lenses for continuous 24-hour IOP monitoring even while sleeping at home,” Li said.
“Our smart soft contact lenses retain the intrinsic properties of lenses such as optical power, biocompatibility, softness, transparency, wettability, oxygen permeability and night wearability. Having all of these characteristics at the same time is necessary to combine smart soft contact lenses. Successful transition of glasses into treatment glaucoma is critical, but modern wearable blood pressure monitors lack these capabilities.”
The Purdue Contact Lens Tonometer creates wireless recordings that are sent to a receiver wearing glasses to measure IOP during the day and to a sleep mask to measure IOP during sleep.
Complete 24-hour IOP rhythm data can be remotely transmitted to clinicians via an encrypted server. Tonometers can generate an audible alarm to detect increased intraocular pressure, which allows you to take appropriate measures and reduce the need for visits to the doctor.
“This tonometer is far more comfortable than any other type of contact lens sensor we have come across and more comfortable than any intraocular pressure sensor currently available on the market,” Kollbaum said. “This is due to Lee’s technique of overlaying the sensor on the lens, keeping the sensor very thin overall and the lens itself, which is a time-tested, commercially available lens, using clinical studies and related time and contact lens manufacturers to ensure that what a lens Comfort and money spent”.
Not only do professional contact lenses provide clear vision like any other contact lens, Kollbaum says, but they also add to the benefits for patients and ophthalmologists who have been looking for a cheaper and more convenient way to see their eyes for years.
“The eyes are a very complex part of the body, softer, more sensitive and more rounded than the skin,” Lee says. “We hope that our approach can also be adapted to help and detect other chronic eye diseases and other functions.” They are also working with Boomerang Ventures, a Purdue University partnership, to bring the technology to clinical practice.
In addition to Lee and Kollbaum, the research team includes Shin Ae Park, Seoul Ah Lee, Brian W. Buduris, Yumin Dai, Keely E. Harris, Bongjoon Kim, Ho Joon Kim, Kyunghoon Kim, Hyowon (Hyu) Lee, Kanggying Liu, Haesu Moon, Woohyun Park, Jay W. Shah and Jinyuan Zhang of Indiana University, Don Meyer of the Indiana University School of Optometry, and Pedro Irazoki and Brett Kollar of Johns Hopkins University.
The technology was disclosed to the Purdue Research Foundation’s Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC), which filed a provisional patent with the USPTO to protect the intellectual property. For information on licensing options, please contact OTC’s Patrick Finnerty at pwfinnerty@prf.org at 2021-LEE-69240.
Lee’s work at the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering is just one of many life-changing projects undertaken by biomedical engineering educators and students. Many of these programs are partnerships between Weldon, healthcare providers, medical researchers and medical device companies that are critical to bringing aspects of the curriculum and research labs into the clinical setting.
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Note to journalists: Images and videos of smart soft contact lenses are available on Google Drive. For a copy of the article, contact Matthew Oates at oatesw@purdue.edu.
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Post time: Oct-10-2022
