Week in review: Lost lens, palm imager, realistic retina

A weekly roundup of ophthalmic news from around the web.

For 28 years, a contact lens quietly festered beneath a woman’s left eyelid. The woman assumed she’d lost the rigid gas-permeable contact lens on a badminton court as a teen, when a shuttlecock struck her eye. But at age 42, it resurfaced. Over a few months, she developed eyelid swelling and tenderness. Surgeons removed a pea-sized cyst containing the lost lens and describe their find in this case report. British Medical Journal

A handheld imager can photograph individual photoreceptors in the eye, according to a report in the journal Optics. The palm-sized device weighs less than 2 PopTarts and can image photoreceptors spaced a mere 4.5 microns apart. Researchers tested the device on 12 healthy adult volunteers and 2 anesthetized children, marking the first use of adaptive optics to image photoreceptors in a child’s eye. The technology could improve the diagnosis of eye diseases and guide early detection of brain conditions or trauma, scientists say.  Duke University

There’s bound to be a cautionary tale involved when a paper begins with “Contact lenses, when worn and cared for properly, are a safe and effective form of vision correction.” The CDC’s latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) describes the fates of 6 people who developed corneal infections after sleeping, swimming and hunting in their lenses. The colorful descriptions make it hard to forget the consequences of improper wear. “While in the shower,” the authors write of Case 2, “he wiped his eyes with a towel, then heard a popping sound and felt a painful sensation in his left eye.” Ouch. CDC

Scientists presented an ultrathin artificial retina last week at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting. The Korean-American team crafted the device—a flexible, high-density and curved sensor array—from 2D materials such as graphene and molybdenum disulfide plus gold, alumina and silicon nitrate. With a few tweaks, the technology could also track heart or brain activity, they say. The competition is heating up: Earlier this year, Swedish-Israeli team unveiled the world’s thinnest retinal implant, crafted from layers of gold and organic tattoo ink. American Chemical Society