High risk of underestimation of internal eye pressure for elderly people

Abstract

Measurement of Internal eye pressure (IOP) is a good starting point for examining whether your eyes are suffered by glaucoma or not. An issue of IOP measurement is that we are obliged to evaluate it under that the equivalent pressure coming from cornea stiffness is unknown. Therefore, the IOP measurement depends upon the structural stiffness of cornea. The goal of this work is to examine how the structural stiffness of cornea changes with respect to age by focusing on cornea curvature. Our experimental results show that the structural stiffness becomes more compliant especially in elderly people than that in young people, and as a result the current IOP measurement is a high risk of underestimation especially for elderly people.