Abstract
Contact lenses are increasingly used in laboratories for in vivo animal retinal imaging and pre-clinical studies. The lens shapes often need modification to optimally fit corneas of individual test subjects. However, the choices from commercially available contact lenses are rather limited. Here, we report a flexible method to fabricate customized hydrogel contact lenses. We showed that the fabricated hydrogel is highly transparent, with refractive indices ranging from 1.42 to 1.45 in the spectra range from 400 nm to 800 nm. The Young’s modulus (1.47 MPa) and hydrophobicity (with a sessile drop contact angle of 40.5°) have also been characterized experimentally. Retinal imaging using optical coherence tomography in rats wearing our customized contact lenses has the quality comparable to the control case without the contact lens. Our method could significantly reduce the cost and the lead time for fabricating soft contact lenses with customized shapes, and benefit the laboratorial-used contact lenses in pre-clinical studies.
Highlights
Hydrogel contact lens can greatly improve wearing comfort, and potentially prevent physiological changes in cornea while providing a good optical transparency during retinal imaging
We further tested the biological compatibility of our customized hydrogel contact lenses using live rats and quantified the imaging quality through the contact lens via in vivo optical coherence tomography (OCT) retinal imaging
We report in this paper a cost effective method for rapid fabrication of customized contact lenses
Summary
Hydrogel contact lens can greatly improve wearing comfort, and potentially prevent physiological changes in cornea while providing a good optical transparency during retinal imaging. Not frequently used in laboratorial retinal imaging, hydrogel has gained its success in the commercial contact lens market as the material of soft contact lens[17]. Commercial hydrogel contact lenses for laboratorial use are rarely seen, due to the prohibitive cost for customization from leading manufacturers. It is difficult to mass produce commercial hydrogel contact lenses to fulfill those requirements, due to the high cost for customization and small quantity in demand. Only few rigid polymer (PMMA) animal contact lenses are in the market and no customizable hydrogel contact lens is commercially available[20]. We developed a lab-friendly method for fabricating customized hydrogel contact lenses, which is simple, rapid, and highly adjustable for particular needs in animal retinal imaging. We further tested the biological compatibility of our customized hydrogel contact lenses using live rats and quantified the imaging quality through the contact lens via in vivo OCT retinal imaging
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