Monitoring corneal wound strength non-invasively

Intensity of light scattered from 24 healing rabbit corneal incisions progressively increased during six weeks following the operation. After the first week, the mean value for scattered light intensity from the wounds was highly correlated with wound tensile strength measured in another group of rabbits. The correlation coefficient was 0.95 at the 0.05 confidence level. It is hoped that a simple and reliable method of measuring scattered light intensity may provide a non-invasive tool for assessing the strength of a corneal wound in the future.