Gaze tracking algorithm using night vision camera

Abstract

Nowadays, the advancement of medical technology has given birth into many innovative machines and devices to improve our health life, especially to those who are disabled or gifted. On some people with severe disabilities such as quadriplegia, the human eye-ball does not only serve as a vision system, but also a means of conveying information and intention to other people. This is because although quadriplegic patients suffer the loss of motor sensory functions from the neck and below, upper neck functions such as the vision system is normally spared. This enables the patient to control the movement of his/her eyeballs to convey desired information. Although many similar researches have been done, this paper proposes the use of image processing on image captured using webcam with its Infra-Red (IR) filter removed (a.k.a night vision) to achieve robustness. This allows the algorithm to properly track the location of the iris despite of its and the pupil color variations. Two image processing algorithms are then used, each with owns tradeoff between speed and accuracy. Analysis on both algorithms shows good tracking performance despite of the mentioned tradeoff.