Soft Contact Lenses for Electroretinograms

Article: Soft contact lenses eyed as new solutions to monitor ocular diseases
Source: Purdue University, via ScienceDaily
Published: March 10, 2021

“Since the first conceptual invention by Leonardo da Vinci, there has been a great desire to utilize contact lenses for eye-wearable biomedical platforms,” reported a lead investigator of a project at Purdue University to engineer soft contact lenses with biosensors for improved patient comfort in electroretinograms. How this project differs from current corneal sensors is the seamless integration of ultrathin, stretchable biosensors with commercial soft contact lenses via “an electrochemical anchoring mechanism,” thus bypassing obstacles presented by the rigid planar surfaces of most electronics. As with electroretinogram sensors, these contact lenses would measure electrophysiological retinal activity from the corneal surface of human eyes; however, the contacts are an improvement over current sensors in both signal quality and patient comfort, that is, avoiding the need for a topical anesthetic or a speculum. From the news article headline, it is tempting to imagine these contact lenses as the kind that could detect biomarkers of ocular diseases in the tear film, but this isn't quite that kind of project. Rather, it is an improved corneal interface for electroretinogram sensors using the more comfortable vehicle of the ubiquitous commercial soft contact lens. That being said, the fact that electronics could be so intimately integrated into the soft, curved surface of soft contact lenses is a big step forward for engineering of other biosensors for monitoring of ocular diseases.

Personal commentary: This is an example of a collaborative research project between engineering and optometry. The bulk of the biomedical engineering contribution came from Purdue University. The clinical application component came from a professor of optometry at Indiana University. This makes sense intuitively when working with contact lenses, but it's also a rare instance of optometric research being reported, albeit only peripherally, in general science news. Finally, additional mechanical engineering involvement came from the University of Virginia.

My rating of this study: ⭐⭐⭐