Assessment of Corneal Biomechanical Properties with Inflation Test Using Optical Coherence Tomography

Biomechanical properties are important for thecornea to maintain its normal shape and function. There isstill a need to develop better methods for accurate measurementof corneal mechanical properties. In this study, wepropose to introduce the optical coherence tomography(OCT) in inflation test for the imaging of corneal deformationin order to measure its biomechanical properties. Tencornea-mimicking silicone phantoms with different stiffnessand five fresh porcine corneas were tested using the proposedmethod. Intra-ocular pressure was changed from 10 to90 mmHg using two different loading rates to observe thepressure-apex displacement relationship and calculate theapparent stiffness of the corneas. Stiffness of the cornealphantoms obtained by the inflation test ranged from 0.2 to1 MPa, which was highly consistent with the results from themechanical tensile test (y = 0.70x,