WATERLOO REGION - Rusting metal fragments dot the surface of the squishy, clear, artificial eyeball Hendrik Walther holds in his hand.

The model, created by Walther and fellow University of Waterloo researcher Chau-Minh Phan and optometry student Han Qiao, is intended to be used by optometry students to practise the intricate task of removing foreign materials, such as metal, from the surface of an eye.

It's a situation optometrists experience more frequently than one might expect, said Walther.

He cited the example of his wife's optometry practice in the region.

"She said that they see one patient with a foreign body in their eye a week," he said, adding the office has six optometrists.

The artificial eye was created by Walther and his colleagues, who founded the startup together, OcuBlink, in June 2018.

OcuBlink, which is affiliated with the UW's Centre for Ocular Research and Education, was one of the winners of the $5,000 Velocity Fund competition in that same year and was accepted into the university's Velocity Garage startup incubator in downtown Kitchener.

It was back in 2014 that Walther and his colleagues started creating model eyes as part of a their PhD projects at UW.

Phan was doing contact lens research as a graduate student and wanted a realistic eye model for testing.

The team created a model called OcuFlow. More recently, they created an enhanced model that has a blinking component to help with testing eye drops and contact lenses, said Walther.

The idea for OcuBall - the eye model with metal fragments - came about two years ago when a professor at UW asked if they would make a model to help students practise the removal of foreign bodies, explained Walther.

The artificial eye could do away with the need to practise on eyes from dead animals, such as pigs, said Walther.

The slippery, non-toxic, polymer and water-based model is easy to store, inexpensive - starting at about $17 an eye - can last months and doesn't have to be cleaned.

Walther and his team insert steel fragments, about 0.3 millimetres in size, into the models. Students can then practise removing the particles as well as the rust that develops around them, he said.

Last year, the startup's first batch of models was used by students at the university's School of Optometry and Vision Science.

A month ago, it had its first order from an outside institution - the Illinois College of Optometry ordered about 70 eyes.

"It's exciting to see that people are interested in it," said Walther. "It's a much safer way of testing and practising (for the) students."

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