Eye tracker

An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movements. The most popular variant uses video images from which the eye position is extracted. Other methods use search coils or are based on the electrooculogram.

Eye trackers are used in research on the visual system, in psychology, and in product design.

Types of Eye Tracker
Eye trackers measure rotations of the eye in one of several ways, but principally they fall into three categories.

One type uses an attachment to the eye, such as a special contact lens with an embedded mirror or magnetic field sensor, and the movement of the attachment is measured with the assumption that it does not slip significantly as the eye rotates. Measurements with tight fitting contact lenses have provided extremely sensitive recordings of eye movement, and magnetic search coils are the method of choice for researchers studying the dynamics and underlying physiology of eye movements.

The second broad category uses some non-contact, optical method for measuring eye motion. Light, typically infrared, is reflected from the eye and sensed by a video camera or some other specially designed optical sensor. The information is then analyzed to extract eye rotation from changes in reflections. Video based eye trackers typically use the corneal reflection (the first Purkinje image) and the center of the pupil as features to track over time. A more sensitive type of eye tracker, the dual-Purkinje eye tracker, uses reflections from the front of the cornea (first Purkinje image) and the back of the lens (fourth Purkinje image) as features to track. A still more sensitive method of tracking is to image features from inside the eye, such as the retinal blood vessels, and follow these features as the eye rotates. Optical methods, particularly those based on video recording, are widely used for gaze tracking and are favored for being non-invasive and relatively inexpensive.

The third category uses electrical potentials measured with contact electrodes placed near the eyes. The most common variant of this is the Electo-Oculogram (EOG) and is based on the fact that the eye has a standing electrical potential, with the cornea being positive relative to the retina. This potential is not constant, however, and its variation causes the EOG to be somewhat unreliable for measuring slow eye movements and fixed gaze positions. The EOG is most useful for measuring the rapid, saccadic eye movements associated with gaze shifts and is the method of choice for measuring REM during sleep.

Applications of Eye Trackers
A great deal of research has gone into studies of the mechanisms and dynamics of eye rotation, but the goal of eye tracking is most often to estimate gaze direction. Users may be interested in what features of an image draw the eye, for example. It is important to realize that the eye tracker does not provide absolute gaze direction, but rather can only measure changes in gaze direction. In order to know precisely what a subject is looking at, some calibration procedure is required in which the subject looks at a point or series of points, while the eye tracker records the value that corresponds to each gaze position. (Even those techniques that track features of the retina cannot provide exact gaze direction because there is no specific anatomical feature that marks the exact point where the visual axis meets the retina, if indeed there is such a single, stable point.) An accurate and reliable calibration is essential for obtaining valid and repeatable eye movement data, and this can be a significant challenge for non-verbal subjects or those who have unstable gaze.

Each method of eye tracking has advantages and disadvantages, and the choice of an eye tracking system depends on considerations of cost and application. There is a trade-off between cost and sensitivity, with the most sensitive systems costing many tens of thousands of dollars and requiring considerable expertise to operate properly. Advances in computer and video technology have led to the development of relatively low cost systems that are useful for many applications and fairly easy to use. Interpretation of the results still requires some level of expertise, however, because a misaligned or poorly calibrated system can produce wildly erroneous data.

Choosing an Eye Tracker
One difficulty in evaluating an eye tracking system is that the eye is never still, and it can be difficult to distinguish the tiny, but rapid and somewhat chaotic movements associated with fixation from noise sources in the eye tracking mechanism itself. One useful evaluation technique is to record from the two eyes simultaneously and compare the vertical rotation records. The two eyes of a normal subject are very tightly coordinated and vertical gaze directions typically agree to within +/- 2 minutes of arc (RMS of vertical position difference) during steady fixation. A properly functioning and sensitive eye tracking system will show this level of agreement between the two eyes, and any differences much larger than this can usually be attributed to measurement error.