A soldier who lost his sight in Iraq is being taught to ‘see’ with his tongue, using a revolutionary new system funded by the MOD.

The BrainPort Vision Device was created in America and works on the principle of sensory substitution - where one sense is used instead of another. In this case the touch sensors of the tongue are used instead of the photoreceptors of the eye.

Lance Corporal Craig Lundberg, who served with 2nd Battalion, Duke of Lancaster's Regiment (2 LANCS), is the first patient in the UK to use the system. In March 2007 Craig lost his sight when he was hit by a grenade in Basra.

The MOD funded Craig’s journey to the US Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM), Pittsburgh, where he was trained how to use the BrainPort™ Vision Device.

With BrainPort, the patient wears a pair of glasses which carry a video camera. Images are fed into a lollypop-like device that is held in the mouth and transforms the pictures into electrical impulses that are felt on the tongue.

The sensation is a tingling of different intensities that correspond to the relative darkness of the pixels recorded on the camera, allowing him to perceive light and dark and negotiate his way around objects.