Waveform characterisation and comparison of nystagmus eye-tracking signals

Abstract

Objective. Pathological nystagmus is a symptom of oculomotor disease where the eyes oscillate involuntarily. The underlying cause of the nystagmus and the characteristics of the oscillatory eye movements are patient specific. An important part of clinical assessment in nystagmus patients is therefore to characterise different recorded eye-tracking signals, i.e. waveforms. Approach. A method for characterisation of the nystagmus waveform morphology is proposed. The method extracts local morphologic characteristics based on a sinusoidal model, and clusters these into a description of the complete signal. The clusters are used to characterise and compare recordings within and between patients and tasks. New metrics are proposed that can measure waveform similarity at different scales; from short signal segments up to entire signals, both within and between patients. Main results. The results show that the proposed method robustly can find the most prominent nystagmus waveforms in a recording. The method accurately identifies different eye movement patterns within and between patients and across different tasks. Significance. In conclusion, by allowing characterisation and comparison of nystagmus waveform patterns, the proposed method opens up for investigation and identification of the underlying condition in the individual patient, and for quantifying eye movements during tasks.