Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A miniature video camera in the center of his eyeglass frames and tiny electrodes implanted at the back of his right eye allow Dean Lloyd to see lights and shapes, more than 30 years after he lost his vision.

Lloyd is one of 32 blind people testing the Argus II system from Second Sight Medical Products Inc., a closely held company based in Sylmar, California. Ten of 15 users of the device identified the direction of a moving line on a computer screen in a study presented today at a science meeting in Chicago.

About 200,000 people in the U.S. and Europe suffer from retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that damages the retina and steals their vision. The Argus II used by Lloyd transmits visual information to the electrodes on his retina, reactivating dormant neural pathways and allowing him to see outlines and bursts of light.

“I see boundaries and edges but not images,” Lloyd said, moving his head -- and his camera -- to scan the face of a visitor. “Your eyes look like flashes of light.”

Lloyd, 68, went through two surgeries, each lasting more than three hours, to have the electrodes and an antenna implanted on his eye in an effort to reverse his disease. The camera sends signals to a miniature computer he wears on his waist, which processes them and sends them to the antenna in his eye. The first procedure, in 2007, was repeated later because some of the electrodes weren’t functioning properly, a glitch that left Lloyd unfazed.

Marketing Clearance

Second Sight is seeking approval to market the device as soon as next year in Europe and the U.S. The company plans to sell the units for about $100,000, said Brian Mech, Second Sight’s vice president for business development, in a telephone interview yesterday.

The company, whose chairman and largest shareholder is the billionaire inventor and entrepreneur Alfred Mann, also has raised money from individual investors and the Menlo Park, California-based venture capital firm Versant Ventures. Second Sight received a $26 million 10-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop the device, Mech said.

Retinitis pigmentosa kills the photo receptor cells on the retina that translate light into signals, said Jessy Dorn, a Second Sight researcher who presented the study findings at the annual meeting, in Chicago, of the Society for Neuroscience.

“Those cells are dying but the rest of the neural architecture is intact,” Dorn said in an telephone interview on Oct. 16. “Ganglion cells and bipolar neurons are usually intact. If you put electrodes near those cells and electrically stimulate them, the cells interpret that as visual information and send it up the chain where the visual part of the brain interprets it.”

Time Needed

For most patients, sight doesn’t return immediately after the electrodes are installed and the camera is turned on, Dorn said.

“The brain needs to relearn how to interpret visual information for the first time in years,” she said. “We do a lot of training and rehab and low-vision therapy.”

Dorn has watched this process unfold in many patients and been present at Eureka moments when they first put those skills to use.

“We do some practice where we walk in a hallway and tell them, ‘Somewhere in front of you there’s a door, can you find it?’ she said. “I’ve been there when they’ve found the door on the first try. It’s very exciting.”

For Lloyd, a lawyer who began his career in medical research before losing his vision three decades ago, the study gives him a chance to be involved again in science.

“I think the project is opening up a new door which hasn’t been opened before,” Lloyd said yesterday in an interview at his Palo Alto, California, law office.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rob Waters in San Francisco at rwaters5@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 20, 2009 13:30 EDT