Abstract
Purpose :
Poor fitting contact lenses is a common cause of eye irritation, potentially leading to keratitis. We seek to improve custom contact lens manufacturing through integrating optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging and 3D printing with micrometer resolution and nanometer surface smoothness.
Methods :
We integrated visible-light optical coherence tomography (vis-OCT), which provides 1.3-µm axial resolution imaging of patients’ corneal anatomy in three-dimensional (3D), and high-resolution 3D printing, which allows optical-quality 3D printing with nanometer scale surface smoothness. We further employed a 6 degree-of-freedom robot to enable vis-OCT scan comformal to the mouse eyeball, which generated a 3D reconstruction of the corneal anatomy. We then segmented the outer surface of the mouse cornea and used it as the base geometry of the customized contact lens design. We used micro-continuous liquid interface production (μCLIP) 3D printing technology to fabricate contact lens based on the geometry obtained from vis-OCT. We used hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA), an FDA approved, biocompatible material as the fabrication material for flexible and transparent contact lenses. Finally, a 3D printed contact lens was placed onto the same mouse cornea and the fitting was characterized using in vivo vis-OCT imaging.
Results :
We obtained 3D anatomy of the mouse cornea using vis-OCT within 10 seconds and successfully extracted the shape of the corneal topology for customized contact lens design. We successfully printed a soft contact lens without human intervention in 8 minutes. In vivo inspection of the printing and optical quality of the contact lens using vis-OCT showed that the contact lens well fitted with the mouse corneal surface and the average fabrication tolerance was less than 10 µm. Under scanning electron microscopy, 3D printed contact lens presented a nanometer scale surface smoothness.
Conclusions :
OCT imaging-driven 3D printing contact lens method establishes an easily accessible route to fabricate contact lens featuring personalized aspherical profile for more effective aberration correction, or for Keratoconus patients with irregular corneas. This method can also be broadly applied to other ophthalmological devices.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.