Scientists have developed a new sensor that detects tears to diagnose ocular trauma

For war doctors or doctors in remote rural areas, the lack of specialized medical equipment makes it difficult for them to judge the extent of ocular trauma in their patients. A research team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign developed OcuCheck, a new portable sensing device that measures the amount of vitamin C in a patient's tear to help determine the specific conditions for diagnosing a patient's ocular trauma. Relevant research results have been published in the "Science Report" journals. The concentration of vitamin C (also known as L-ascorbic acid) in human eyeball ocular tear films is relatively low under normal conditions, while the acid concentration of the vitreous gel inside the eyeball is relatively high. The principle of the OcuCheck sensor is to sample the patient's tear film by measuring the amount of vitamin C in it and comparing it at normal values. If the acid concentration is higher than normal, then ocular trauma led to the leakage of vitamin C from the eyeball to the surface of the eye, the severity of ocular trauma can be determined by determining the acid concentration. The main part of the sensing instrument consists of several layers of material in a stacked structure consisting of a layer of filter paper, a layer of graphene with a thickness of 1 nm, a polymer that can cross graphene, a gold electrode, ascorbate oxidase Oxidase). When ascorbate in the sensor encounters ascorbic acid, the polymer in the material begins to pass through the graphene, the charge in the sensor changes, and the electrode measures the amount of vitamin C reading. Currently OcuCheck has been applied to 16 cases of ocular trauma patients ophthalmic surgical experiments, the researchers found that the instrument for the determination of ascorbic acid concentration is highly accurate. Although the instrument has not been tested on trauma patients, the team predicted the results will still be very good, since the accuracy of the instrument will not be affected by the blood. InnSight Technologies, a spin-off of the university, is in the process of commercializing sensors, including adding operator interfaces and portable devices.

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