A camera-based object detection system for a severely visually impaired or blind person consisting a digital camera mounted on the person's eyeglass or head that takes images on demand. Near-real time image processing algorithms decipher certain attributes of the captured image by processing it for edge pattern detection within a central region of the image. The results are classified by artificial neural networks trained on a list of known objects, in a look up table, or by a threshold. Once the pattern is classified a descriptive sentence is constructed of the object and its certain attributes and a computer-based voice synthesizer is used to verbally announce the descriptive sentence. The invention is used to determine the size of an object, or its distance from another object, and can be used in conjunction with an IR-sensitive camera to provide "sight" in poor visibility conditions, or at night.