A Smart Contact Lens for Eye Injuries

A smart contact lens fitted with an artificial iris could help people with eye injuries and congenital diseases see better. The lens, described this week at the International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco, uses concentric LCDs to mimic the expansion and contraction of the pupil that’s normally controlled by the iris.

The artificial iris is part of a larger project on smart contact lenses led by Herbert De Smet, a professor who works on intelligent sensors at the University of Ghent. De Smet’s group is working on putting many electronic components onto these lenses, including batteries, antennas, control electronics, and chemical sensors.

The lens presented at the San Francisco meeting is aimed at helping about 200,000 people who suffer from problems with the iris, whether due to cancer, an acute injury, or genetics. The iris is the colored part of the eye surrounding the pupil. It contracts under bright light to protect the retina from, say, the rays of the full sun,…[Read more]