Increased sensitivity of smart contact lenses for continuous intraocular pressure measurement using ring-shaped design

Abstract

Smart contact lenses with continuous intraocular pressure (IOP) sensors are emerging as an alternate system for monitoring the progression and treatment of glaucoma. To date, such sensors have primarily consisted of strain gauges embedded on traditional contact lenses. This work presents a novel smart contact lens design consisting of a ring-shaped contact lens with a piezoresistive strain gauge. We observe an increase in IOP measurement sensitivity of the device with an increase inner diameter of the ring. Ring-shaped sensors with an inner diameter of 2.7 mm show an increase in sensitivity of up to 7.1% and ring-shaped sensors with an inner diameter of 4.7 mm show an increase in sensitivity of up to 17.9%. It is expected that by incorporating a ring-shaped lens, other strain gauge-based smart contact lenses in the literature would experience similar increase in sensitivity.