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A New Era of Smart Contact Lenses

by | Jul 1, 2022 | Manuscripts | 0 comments

Priyanka Singh, B.Optom

Fellow optometrist, Dr Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital, India

 

Contact lens is an artificial device which covers the anterior most part of cornea. Generally, we use contact lenses for refractive error correction, therapeutic and cosmetic purposes. Smart contact lens itself means; it will provide some other features than conventional contact lens. In recent years, various contact lenses have been used for drug delivery, monitoring glucose sugar level, and alcohol detection but now these contact lenses come with additional features which gives better quality of vision. (1-3)

Smart contact lens is a wireless eye tracker which analyses eye motion and blink. These lenses have aqueous based Nano batteries which are biocompatible, microchip, integrated LED light and radio frequency antenna for wireless energy transfer.(4) 14KPPI display is a micro-LED  which seems like a grain of sand which will transfer text, photos, video content in retina. These smart contact lenses are oxygen permeable ,wrinkle free ,thin and comfortable for the wearer while performing or maintaining electrical functionality. There are different companies who developed smart contact lens, each has additional specific function The projector and display don’t hamper our real time vision it will work when a user wants to use them .(5) Mojo vision lens are one of them, which is based on augmented reality which will provide us information or data without using any special glasses or other devices. Anyone can check or get useful data while doing their task without any disturbance or break because everything will display in front of our eyes. A person can see required data on ski scope, distance calculation while bicycling, mountain climbers, athletes or while giving presentation, in healthcare service and  fire brigade for seeing map or direction, military  It will help them without keeping checking phone or wrist as it is hands free and wireless figure.

Smart contact lenses give visual strength specially to low vision patients or aniridic eye, these lenses not only enhance visual quality of vision it will also increase contrast with magnification . Hence, used as a low vision aid as it will give hands free experience and help in their daily living skills .(5,6)

It can be used in treating glaucoma by checking intraocular pressure by tear film fluid, (7,8), age related macular degeneration & ocular surface disorder. These smart contact lenses are useful in aniridia or coloboma patient in which artificial iris is fitted in lens and gets all information from aniridic patient and it changes pupil size according to light stimulus in bright or dim light and helps in correcting aberration e.g., keratoconus, photophobic, increasing depth focus. (6) Smart contact lenses also come with a zoom in and out effect through each blink  which works with a tiny mirror like  chip with Telescope fitted within contact lens ,this telescope provides approx. 2.8x  magnification and can be pair with polaroid glasses to eliminate magnification error like in ARMD patients.(9)

 

Reference

  1. Keum DH, Kim SK, Koo J, Lee GH, Jeon C, Mok JW, Mun BH, Lee KJ, Kamrani E, Joo CK, Shin S. Wireless smart contact lens for diabetic diagnosis and therapy. Science Advances. 2020 Apr 24;6(17):eaba3252.
  2. Sempionatto JR, Brazaca LC, García-Carmona L, Bolat G, Campbell AS, Martin A, Tang G, Shah R, Mishra RK, Kim J, Zucolotto V. Eyeglasses-based tear biosensing system: Non-invasive detection of alcohol, vitamins, and glucose. Biosensors and Bioelectronics. 2019 Jul 15;137:161-70.
  3. Gulsen D, Chauhan A. Ophthalmic drug delivery through contact lenses. Investigative ophthalmology & visual science. 2004 Jul 1;45(7):2342-7.
  4. Yun J, Zeng Y, Kim M, Gao C, Kim Y, Lu L, Kim TT, Zhao W, Bae TH, Lee SW. Tear-Based Aqueous Batteries for Smart Contact Lenses Enabled by Prussian Blue Analogue Nanocomposites. Nano Letters. 2021 Feb 3;21(4):1659-65.
  5. Mojo Vision Developing First True Smart Contact Lens.https://www.businesswire.com/news/ home/20200116005221/en/Mojo-Vision-Developing-TrueSmart-Contact-Lens. [Accessed 25/05/2022, 20:50hrs AEST].
  6. Quintero AV, Pérez-Merino P, García AF, De Smet H. Smart contact lens: A promising therapeutic tool in aniridia. Archivos de la Sociedad Española de Oftalmología (English Edition). 2021 Nov 1;96:68-73.
  7. Harrison L. Triggerfish pressure sensor promising. Ophthalmology Times. Available at: https://www. ophthalmologytimes.com/view/triggerfish-pressure-sensorpromising. [Accessed 25/05/2022, 21:00hrs AEST]
  8. Dubey S, Mittal D, Mukherjee S, Bhoot M, Gupta YP. Relationship between nocturnal intraocular pressure-related peak recorded by contact lens sensor and disease progression in treated glaucomatous eyes. Indian Journal of Ophthalmology. 2020 Nov;68(11):2427.
  9. Schuster GM, Arianpour A, Cookson S, Zhang A, Hendrik L, O’Brien T, Alvarez A, Ford JE. Wink-controlled polarization-switched telescopic contact lenses. Applied Optics. 2015 Nov 10;54(32):9597-605.

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