Dr. Sarita Soni, Co-Director of the Borish Center for Ophthalmic Research (BCOR) and Associate Dean for Research at the School of Optometry, has conducted and directed a number of investigations at the BCOR over the past five years. She has worked with contact lens and ophthalmic lens companies, developing programs to encourage industry to use the Center's expertise in clinical trials. Under her direction, the Center has been refining objective clinical procedures to be used as objective measures of visual function. Dr. Soni has led the Center's efforts, with support from John Kennedy, Director of the IU Center for Survey Research, in developing quality of life and quality of vision instruments used in clinical trials to evaluate new ophthalmic devices. These developments have resulted in 9 industry-funded clinical trials for new vision devices; the majority of the trials having used sample sizes of over 100 subjects.
While Dr. Soni has worked to make the Borish Center attractive for collaborative clinical research with industry, she has worked internally to bring together students and faculty to participate in investigations. Optometry and vision science graduate students assist in most of Dr. Soni's current investigations. School of Optometry faculty who have collaborated on research projects with Dr. Soni include Drs. Horner, Rainey, Malinovsky, Howard, and Thibos. Dr. Soni also collaborates with School of Medicine faculty on two projects: one on macular degeneration and the other on ocular changes during pregnancy.
Professor Soni focuses her own research on correction of ametropia, especially with contact lenses, and reduction or elimination of myopia through orthokeratology. Her investigation of adolescents and soft contact lenses concluded that myopia does not increase significantly among soft contact lens wearers compared to spectacle lens wearers. This project was done in collaboration with Drs. Horner and Himebaugh from the School of Optometry and Professor Roger Terry, Department of Psychology at Hanover College.
Dr. Soni continues to focus on correction of presbyopia with soft contact lenses. She has been working with a research group in Europe to develop a new concept in presbyopic correction with soft contact lenses. Designs have been developed and tested, and a pilot clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety has been completed.
Having determined the efficacy of daily-wear, reverse-geometry, rigid gas-permeable contact lenses to temporarily reduce or eliminate myopia in moderate to low myopes, Dr. Soni has recently focused on the efficacy and safety of these lenses when worn during sleep. This pilot study is being conducted under an FDA investigational-device exemption. More than 15 optometry students have played an active role in the orthokeratology studies. Prior to starting this investigation, other research has been conducted to evaluate various fitting methods. Dr. Himebaugh and Dr. Horner have been co-investigators in a number of projects related to orthokeratology.
Teaching
