SMART INTRAOCULAR PLATFORM FOR REAL-TIME INTRAOCULAR PRESSURE MONITORING

The implantation of an intraocular lens (IOL) is the most frequently performed surgical procedure in the world, with an estimation of 20 million-cataract operations/year globally [1], but the recent increase in optical lens designs has not been paralleled by a further sophistication of the IOL platform.In the current configuration, the IOL suffers from a number of shortcomings: a passive optical element and a lack of compliance of lens designs and materials.Beyond a pure optical solution, the IOL can be also looked upon as a smart implantable medical device inside the eye (figure 1).Considering this point, it would be incredibly powerful to take advantage of the well-developed IOL delivery methods in cataract surgery and furnish the passive optical implant with opto-electronic active components to study in real-time the intraocular pressure.Among the variety of MEMS sensors, capacitive-based are composed of a flexible and micro-structured dielectric layer sandwiched by two film electrode plates and they have become the focus of research for implantable devices because of their simple construction, low power consumption, outstanding performance (such as long-term drift stability and short response time) and the possibility of wireless data transmission without an external interrogation method [2,3].