Abstract

Typical postoperative complications in cataract surgery are that refractive power and curvature of the implanted intraocular lens (IOL) do not have optimum values, requiring the patient to wear viewing aids. This is mainly because biometric data relevant for calculation of the IOL’s shape cannot be determined with the required precision. Hence, there is a need for methods to tune the focal length postoperatively in a non-invasive manner.

We have developed polymers where we can induce a change in refractive index by linking or cleaving bonds between a sufficiently large number of side groups of the polymer main chain in a photoinduced cycloaddition or cycloreversion reaction, respectively. These photoreactions lead to a change in refractive index great enough to be interesting for the concept of in vivo tunable IOL’s. The photochemical reaction can be triggered by a two-photon process (TPA) using a pulsed laser system, i.e. the energy required for bond breaking is provided by two photons in the visible range. This is important because light in the UV cannot induce undesired changes of the refractive index owing to the strong UV-absorption of the cornea. Undesired changes due to light in the visible range of the spectrum are unlikely to happen because photon density of sun light is much too low for TPA. Due to the excellent spatial resolution that can be achieved with two-photon processes one cannot only modify the refractive index of the entire lens but also selectively in well defined areas enabling to correct for aberrations such as astigmatism.

Here, we present new polymers that do not only exhibit a photoinduced change of refractive index great enough to induce a change of focal length of more than two diopters in a standard IOL. These new polymers have also significantly improved material properties with respect to the fabrication of the IOL and the TPA- sensitivities and the light energy required to induce the refractive index change.

© 2007 SPIE