Your eye could someday house its own high-tech¹ information center, tracking important changes and letting you know when it's time to see an eye doctor. University of Washington engineers have designed a low-power sensor² that could be placed permanently³ in a person's eye to track hard-to-measure changes in eye pressure. The sensor would be embedded⁴ with an artificial lens during cataract⁵（白内障） surgery and would detect pressure changes instantaneously（即刻）, then transmit the data wirelessly⁷ using radio frequency waves.

 

The researchers recently published their results in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering and filed patents on an initial prototype of the pressure-monitoring device.

 

"No one has ever put electronics inside the lens of the eye, so this is a little more radical," said Karl Böhringer, a UW professor of electrical engineering. "We have shown this is possible in principle. If you can fit this sensor device into an intraocular lens（人工晶体） implant⁸ during cataract surgery, it won't require any further surgery for patients."

 

The research team wanted to find an easy way to measure eye pressure for management of glaucoma（青光眼）, a group of diseases that damage the eye's optic nerve and can cause blindness. Right now there are two ways to check eye pressure, but both require a visit to the ophthalmologist. At most, patients at risk for glaucoma may only get their pressure checked several times a year, said Tueng Shen, a collaborator⁹ and UW professor of ophthalmology（眼科学）.

 

But if ophthalmologists could insert a pressure monitoring system in the eye with an artificial lens during cataract surgery -- now a common procedure performed on 3 million to 4 million people each year to remove blurry¹⁰ vision or glare caused by a hazy¹¹（朦胧的） lens -- that could save patients from a second surgery and essentially¹² make their replacement¹³ lens "smarter" and more functional¹⁴.

 

"The implementation¹⁵ of the monitoring device has to be well-suited clinically and must be designed to be simple and reliable," Shen said. "We want every surgeon who does cataract surgeries to be able to use this."

 

The UW engineering team, which includes Brian Otis, now with Google Inc., and Cagdas Varel and Yi-Chun Shih, both former doctoral students in electrical engineering, built a prototype that uses radio frequency for wireless⁶ power and data transfer. A thin, circular antenna¹⁶ spans the perimeter¹⁷ of the device -- roughly tracing a person's iris¹⁸ -- and harnesses enough energy from the surrounding field to power a small pressure sensor chip. The chip communicates with a close-by receiver about any shifts in frequency, which signify a change in pressure. Actual pressure is then calculated and those changes are tracked and recorded in real-time.

 

The chip's processing mechanism¹⁹ is actually very simple, leaving the computational heavy lifting to the nearby receiver, which could be a handheld device or possibly built into a smartphone, Böhringer said.

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