MADISON, Wis. -- A unique procedure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is helping one infant regain his sight.

One of the first things parents do when their children are born is count fingers and toes. But it can be more difficult to determine if an infant is having vision problems.

"After he was born, as he would look at us, I could see one of his eyes turn inward. I know babies cross their eyes a lot, but he was 3 or 4 months old and getting to the point where that should stop happening," said mother Susannah Moll.

So in August, Moll took her 5-month-old son Carter to see the pediatrician. A month and a half later, Carter's eyes turned white.

"(It was) cataracts. My first thought was an elderly person, (or) an old dog. I've see a lot of dogs that have them -- the white eye, the pupil. I was amazed. I didn't know that children could get them. I don't think a lot of people know that," Moll said.

"Cataracts are very much like cataracts in older adults. They tend to develop more rapidly and sometimes children are actually born with them. Cataracts are when the lens is opaque rather than clear," said Dr. Michael Struck, a pediatric ophthalmologist at the UW Ophthalmology Department.

Struck performed surgery on carter in October. But to truly measure Carter's progress, doctors used a cutting-edge procedure called Visual Evoked Cortical Potentials, or VECP for short.

"What we're doing is recording the brainwaves from the visual part of the brain, which is located in the back of the head. I put some electrodes, some little probes, on the scalp and some lotion that records the electrical response of the brain to visual stimulation," said Dr. Jim Ver Hoeve, a senior scientist.

Using an infrared camera to see his eyes, Ver Hoeve could monitor Carter's vision with what, in essence, is an electronic version of an eye chart.

"We're presenting a very precise pattern of stripes that starts from wide stripes, like the big letter on the eye chart, and rapidly decreases in striped width until it's like the smallest 'e' on the eye chart," Ver Hoeve said. "Because the stripes are also vibrating, that causes a corresponding reaction in the brain and we can detect when the brain stops responding."

"I think probably what we do is at the pinnacle of what's being done in the country," Struck said. "It's critical because without the feedback, in terms of visual development, our treatment is just based on observation, not on feedback about how it's really working."

Struck said that one in 10,000 children will have cataracts in the first year of life. He added that, including UW, there are probably only three centers in the country that could do this kind of testing.