Dengbao Xiao et al’s prototype lens

A Chinese research team has developed a new ‘smart’ contact lens (CL) that can continuously monitor intraocular pressure (IOP), regardless of environmental temperature fluctuations.

Led by Dengbao Xiao, from the Institute of Advanced Structure Technology, Beijing, the team monitored the IOP of porcine eyes in vitro. Reporting the outcome of their study in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, they said they were able to maintain “satisfactory” measurement accuracies even with internal temperature variations exceeding 10°C. “We developed an intelligent wireless measuring contact lens incorporating a dual inductor-capacitor-resistor resonant system to achieve temperature self-compensation for quantitative IOP monitoring in different application environments.”

They also noted that when IOP was calculated from the signal of only one of the lens’ circuits, the results deviated up to 87% from the true values. However, when information from both circuits was used, the pressure readings differed by only 7% from the true value.