Modern Monitoring Intraocular Pressure Sensing Devices Based on Application Specific Integrated Circuits

Glaucoma is a neurodegenerative condition that is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. Elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) is the main risk factor for the development and progression of the disease. Methods to lower IOP remain the first line treatments for the condition. Current methods of IOP measurement do not permit temporary noninvasive monitoring 24-hour IOP on a periodic basis. Ongoing research will in time provide a means of developing a device that will enable continuous or temporary monitoring of IOP. At present a device suitable for clinical use is not yet available. This review contains a description of different devices currently in development for measuring IOP: soft contact lens, LC resonant circuits and on-chip sensing devices. All of them use application-specific integrated circuits (ASICS) to process the measured signals and send them to recording devices. Soft contact lens devices are based on an embedded strain gauge, LC circuits vary their resonance frequency depending on the intraocular pressure (IOP) and, finally, on-chip sensing devices include an integrated microelectromechanical sensor (MEMS). MEMS are capacitors whose capacity varies with IOP. These devices allow for an accurate IOP measurement (up to +/– 0.2 mm Hg) with high sampling rates (up to 1 sample/min) and storing 1 week of raw data. All of them operate in an autonomous way and even some of them are energetically independent.