Biomechanical eye model and measurement setup for investigating accommodating intraocular lenses

We present a biomechanical eye model to induce pseudophakic accommodative movement for evaluation of the focal shift of accommodative intraocular lenses. Therefore, an accommodative intraocular lens (IOL) was implanted into freshly enucleated porcine eyes. The eyes were glued into a mechanical apparatus to expand the ciliar body effectuating mechanical accommodation. An optical coherence tomographer was used to measure positional and geometrical changes of the IOL for different levels of expansion. The expansion unit allowed stretching of the globe of several millimeters. With the biomechanical eye model we were able to simulate the mechanical functionality of accommodation as well as to measure the lens vault and change in geometry. Accommodative vault could only be measured with an intact vitreous, indicating that the vitreous plays an important role for the functionality of accommodative IOLs.