Implantable Sensor Monitors Glaucoma

A sensor designed to be implanted in the eye could monitor glaucoma by measuring pressure in the eye's interior.

The pressure sensor, under development by researchers at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN, USA) is placed between two layers of tissue in the eye, measures the interocular pressure, and transmits the information to an external receiver, continuously monitoring interocular pressure, instead of measuring it once every six months in the ophthalmologist's office.

One of the major obstacles in creating such a sensor is designing a tiny but highly functional chip that uses very little power. To overcome this problem, the sensor was designing to run on nanowatts rather than on microwatts. The signal is then boosted by a nanoamplifier. The sensor was presented at the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society's Sciences and Technologies for Health conference, held during August 2007 in Lyon (France). The researchers are planning to conduct animal trials by December 2007 and human trials are planned within 18 months.

"The problem is that your interocular pressure spikes over hours, sometimes minutes. So you can be fine today and fine in six months and spend three months in the middle where it's very high, killing your optic nerve,” said researcher Pedro Irazoqui, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biomedical engineering. "What you really need to do is check it often, every couple of minutes, but you can't go to the doctor every couple of minutes for the rest or your life. So what you need is a device that measures your eye pressure continuously.”

Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases characterized by pressure that causes damage to the optic nerve from glaucoma, and results in loss of peripheral and then central vision. Glaucoma may be treated with medications or surgery to try to stop further damage to the optic nerve and further loss of vision.


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