Northern Michigan's News LeaderHealthy Living: Goodbye to Lazy Eye

It could be blinding your child years before you realize it. The condition known as lazy eye happens when the brain ignores one eye -- causing its vision to fade away. It's the most common cause of vision problems in children, and only about one in three kids show physical symptoms. In Healthy Living, Robyn Haines tells us about a doctor's new invention, helping catch it in just seconds.

Doctor David Hunter is an ophthalmologist at Children's Hospital Boston. He demonstrates the pediatric vision scanner on Ashton. In just two and a half seconds, the device he co-invented can catch vision loss or misaligned eyes in kids as young as two.

But it's hard to diagnose lazy eye before a child can read an eye chart. That's what the scanners blinking smiley face is helping do. Two green lights mean both eyes are fine. One or two red lights mean there's a problem. The prototype was tested on more than 200 kids. It worked better than 96-percent of the time. Doctor Hunter would like to see it become a part of every child's annual check-up.

Doctor Hunter's been working on the pediatric vision scanner for 20 years. It's still in trials now, and work is being done to make it lighter and wireless, but hunter believes it could be in your pediatrician's office sometime in 2012.