Gaze Analysis Research Articles

Pilot Study on Gaze Characteristics of Older Drivers While Watching Driving Movies.

Objective: This study aims to clarify the gazing characteristics of older drivers while driving cars using a gaze analysis device. Methods: The participants included 16 older and 12 middle-aged drivers who drove cars daily. After conducting cognitive and attentional function tests, eye gaze while watching driving videos was measured using an eye tracker. Ten driving videos were prepared. In addition, a total of 34 hazard areas were analyzed. Results: The results of the gaze measurement parameters were statistically compared between the two groups. In the older group, the gaze analysis results indicated that while viewing driving videos, the search for areas close to the car was expanded. In addition, in several hazard areas, we observed a decrease in the number of drivers gazing at the driver, shortened total gazing time, delay in the timing of gazing, and decrease in the number of visits. Conclusions: Older drivers' eye movement is increased; however, it is characterized by gazing at unimportant areas, indicating an inefficient scanning pattern. Although these results do not indicate an obvious decline in driving ability among older drivers, the decline in hazard perception may become apparent in some situations. The data contain underpowered results and require revalidation in larger studies.

Virtual reality interview with feedback framework for situational practice of gaze among autistic adults

BackgroundAutistic individuals commonly seek employment; however, only a small fraction are in the workforce. In part, this might be due to mismatches between their social patterns of attention and gaze, and society’s normative expectations during interviews. MethodTo help mitigate such disadvantages through a solo situational practice tool, we present a framework that consists of a virtual reality (VR) based job interview simulation and a coaching component. Employing data visualization, video modeling, and VR role-play of the targeted behavior, the coaching support could be done in a self-deliverable practice manner. A participatory design session with two autistic design partners was important in the co-creation of the feedback methods, making them easier to understand, and including positive reinforcement. ResultsFourteen autistic individuals used the VR job interview simulation tool. Eleven received the gaze analysis and support stage and participated in a second VR simulation session. Preliminary results were positive, in that participant scores on average eye contact duration, average time without eye contact, and percentage of eye contact while listening and while speaking generally approached the corresponding medians of the non-autistic reference dataset. Participants were surveyed about the utility of the tool after the second feedback session and two months later. All survey respondents perceived the tool to be useful and the provided feedback to be helpful in daily social interactions. ConclusionsThis study provides insights towards the development of a VR job interview simulation and feedback framework that can enable solo situational practice of gaze and common interview questions.

Examining the effect of locomotion techniques on virtual prototype assessment: Gaze analysis using a Head-Mounted Display

Improvements in the performance and graphical quality of Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) have led to their increasing use in Virtual Reality (VR) for product presentation and virtual prototype (VP) evaluations. Various locomotion techniques in VR make it possible to move through a virtual scenario and approach the VP for evaluation purposes. The integration of eye-tracking devices into recent HMDs allows the trajectory and gaze behavior of observers to be reported during the evaluation, often more objectively than self-report questionnaires. However, very few studies have used physiological measures for the evaluation of products embedded in VR environments. Therefore, this paper offers a study in which 95 people evaluated three VPs of street furniture presented in their environment of use using Meta Quest Pro headset and explored through teleport and natural walking. The influence of the locomotion techniques on the ratings recorded using a semantic differential, sense of presence, cybersickness, and the role of eye-tracking in understanding gaze behavior while evaluating products' Areas of Interest (AOIs), are investigated. This study found no evidence that the way of approaching the product influences the evaluation of some of its features, overall product evaluation, confidence in responses, sense of presence, or cybersickness differently. On the other hand, this work evidences that the locomotion technique had an impact on how the user approached the products, which could significantly influence the viewing time of some AOIs. The study revealed that the most observed AOIs coincided with those parts closely related to important features, generally located at the top of the products, so paying special attention to these parts when designing and evaluating similar VPs is recommended.

ShouldAR: Detecting Shoulder Surfing Attacks Using Multimodal Eye Tracking and Augmented Reality

Shoulder surfing attacks (SSAs) are a type of observation attack designed to illicitly gather sensitive data from "over the shoulder" of victims. This attack can be directed at mobile devices, desktop screens, Personal Identification Number (PIN) pads at an Automated Teller Machine (ATM), or written text. Existing solutions are generally focused on authentication techniques (e.g., logins) and are limited to specific attack scenarios (e.g., mobile devices or PIN Pads). We present ShotjldAR, a mobile and usable system to detect SSAs using multimodal eye gaze information (i.e., from both the potential attacker and victim). ShouldAR uses an augmented reality headset as a platform to incorporate user eye gaze tracking, rear-facing image collection and eye gaze analysis, and user notification of potential attacks. In a 24-participant study, we show that the prototype is capable of detecting 87.28% of SSAs against both physical and digital targets, a two-fold improvement on the baseline solution using a rear-facing mirror, a widely used solution to the SSA problem. The ShouldAR approach provides an AR-based, active SSA defense that applies to both digital and physical information entry in sensitive environments.

Expert gaze as a usability indicator of medical AI decision support systems: a preliminary study

Given the current state of medical artificial intelligence (AI) and perceptions towards it, collaborative systems are becoming the preferred choice for clinical workflows. This work aims to address expert interaction with medical AI support systems to gain insight towards how these systems can be better designed with the user in mind. As eye tracking metrics have been shown to be robust indicators of usability, we employ them for evaluating the usability and user interaction with medical AI support systems. We use expert gaze to assess experts’ interaction with an AI software for caries detection in bitewing x-ray images. We compared standard viewing of bitewing images without AI support versus viewing where AI support could be freely toggled on and off. We found that experts turned the AI on for roughly 25% of the total inspection task, and generally turned it on halfway through the course of the inspection. Gaze behavior showed that when supported by AI, more attention was dedicated to user interface elements related to the AI support, with more frequent transitions from the image itself to these elements. When considering that expert visual strategy is already optimized for fast and effective image inspection, such interruptions in attention can lead to increased time needed for the overall assessment. Gaze analysis provided valuable insights into an AI’s usability for medical image inspection. Further analyses of these tools and how to delineate metrical measures of usability should be developed.

Proposal of Gaze Analysis to Visualize Tacit Knowledge of Nursing Expert Skills.

This study was conducted to develop nursing skills learning support system, particularly addressing a "blood drawing technique," among other nursing skills. It analyzes tacit knowledge associated with skilled nurses' (hereinafter "experts"') movements when executing a blood drawing technique, devoting attention to their gaze. Overall, positive correlation was found between the ladder level and the success rate.

Development of Automated Visual Acuity Measurement Using a Calibration-Free Eye-Tracking System.

Purpose Infant vision assessment often relies on grating acuity; however, its objectivity and convenience must be improved. A calibration-free eye-tracking system, even in preverbal children, enables easy and precise gaze analysis. This pilot study aimed to develop a reliable automated monocular vision screening. Methods Participants (n=118) underwent a grating visual acuity test using the eye-tracking system. Correlations between the grating acuity, uncorrected visual acuity, and refractive error were analyzed across different cutoff values of fixation duration percentage. Results Strong correlations were found between the grating acuity and refractive error at 69% and 88% thresholds. Similar correlations with uncorrected visual acuity were noted at 70% and 89% thresholds. False-negatives around the 70% threshold were noted, indicating potential overestimation of acuity in cases of low visual acuity/high refractive error. Discussion The results highlight the feasibility of calibration-free eye-tracking system-based monocular vision screening with an optimal screening threshold of 90%.

Investigating the role of flight phase and task difficulty on low-time pilot performance, gaze dynamics and subjective situation awareness during simulated flight.

Gaze behaviour has been used as a proxy for information processing capabilities that underlie complex skill performance in real-world domains such as aviation. These processes are highly influenced by task requirements, expertise and can provide insight into situation awareness (SA). Little research has been done to examine the extent to which gaze behaviour, task performance and SA are impacted by various task manipulations within the confines of early-stage skill development. Accordingly, the current study aimed to understand the impact of task difficulty on landing performance, gaze behaviour and SA across different phases of flight. Twenty-four low-time (<300 hours) pilots completed simulated landing scenarios under visual flight rules conditions. Traditional gaze metrics, entropybased metrics, and blink rate provided meaningful insight about the extent to which information processing is modulated by flight phase and task difficulty. The results also suggested that gaze behavior changes compensated for increased task demands and minimized the impact on task performance. Dynamic gaze analyses were shown to be a robust measure of task difficulty and pilot flight hours. Recommendations for the effective implementation of gaze behaviour metrics and their utility in examining information processing changes are discussed.

A method for extracting corneal reflection images from multiple eye images

The incident light reflected from the cornea is rich in information about the human surroundings, and these reflected rays are imaged by the camera, which can be used for research on human consciousness and gaze analysis, and produce certain help in the fields of psychology, human computer interaction and disease diagnosis. However, limited by the low corneal reflection ability, when a high-definition camera captures corneal reflecting rays, a large amount of color and texture interference from the iris can seriously contaminate the corneal reflection images, resulting in low usability and ubiquity of corneal reflection images. In this paper, we propose a corneal reflection image extraction method with multiple eye images as input. We align the iris regions of multiple eye images with the help of iris localization method, and by comparing multiple iris regions, we obtain the complementary iris regions, so that the iris interference in the corneal reflection region can be stripped completely. A large number of experiments have demonstrated that our work can effectively mitigate iris interference and effectively improve the quality of corneal reflection images.

Eye and head movements in visual search in the extended field of view

In natural environments, head movements are required to search for objects outside the field of view (FoV). Here we investigate the power of a salient target in an extended visual search array to facilitate faster detection once this item comes into the FoV by a head movement. We conducted two virtual reality experiments using spatially clustered sets of stimuli to observe target detection and head and eye movements during visual search. Participants completed search tasks with three conditions: (1) target in the initial FoV, (2) head movement needed to bring the target into the FoV, (3) same as condition 2 but the periphery was initially hidden and appeared after the head movement had brought the location of the target set into the FoV. We measured search time until participants found a more salient (O) or less salient (T) target among distractors (L). On average O’s were found faster than T’s. Gaze analysis showed that saliency facilitation occurred due to the target guiding the search only if it was within the initial FoV. When targets required a head movement to enter the FoV, participants followed the same search strategy as in trials without a visible target in the periphery. Moreover, faster search times for salient targets were only caused by the time required to find the target once the target set was reached. This suggests that the effect of stimulus saliency differs between visual search on fixed displays and when we are actively searching through an extended visual field.

Comprehensive Assessment of Artificial Intelligence Tools for Driver Monitoring and Analyzing Safety Critical Events in Vehicles.

Human factors are a primary cause of vehicle accidents. Driver monitoring systems, utilizing a range of sensors and techniques, offer an effective method to monitor and alert drivers to minimize driver error and reduce risky driving behaviors, thus helping to avoid Safety Critical Events (SCEs) and enhance overall driving safety. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, in particular, have been widely investigated to improve the efficiency and accuracy of driver monitoring or analysis of SCEs. To better understand the state-of-the-art practices and potential directions for AI tools in this domain, this work is an inaugural attempt to consolidate AI-related tools from academic and industry perspectives. We include an extensive review of AI models and sensors used in driver gaze analysis, driver state monitoring, and analyzing SCEs. Furthermore, researchers identified essential AI tools, both in academia and industry, utilized for camera-based driver monitoring and SCE analysis, in the market. Recommendations for future research directions are presented based on the identified tools and the discrepancies between academia and industry in previous studies. This effort provides a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners seeking a deeper understanding of leveraging AI tools to minimize driver errors, avoid SCEs, and increase driving safety.

Triggering Cockpit Alerts Using an Eye-Tracking-Based Measure of Monitoring Performance

Abstract: This study explored the potential for enhancing pilot performance via an alerting system that adapts according to an eye-tracking-based measure of monitoring. The novel measure combines gaze analysis with system state assessment to estimate the pilot’s understanding of the current system state. On this basis, an alerting system was developed to direct pilot attention to unnoticed system state changes, thereby improving system state monitoring. In a flight simulator study involving 10 participants in a generic jet cockpit, we compared the adaptive alerting system with a no-assistance condition. Although alerting improved the participants’ performance in two tracking tasks, it adversely impacted performance in a third task. Nonetheless, alerting resulted in a decrease in both variance and mean detection time of critical changes. Participants’ subjective ratings were generally positive, yet they criticized the lack of transparency of the alerting mechanism. Alerts triggered based on eye-tracking and system state show potential for improving operator task performance. Nonetheless, for the system to reach its full performance potential, it is critical that the operator understand the principles underlying the alert triggers. False positives and alert design were identified as key areas for improvement to maintain user trust and task flow.

Gaze analysis: A survey on its applications

The examination of ocular movements has a wide range of applications due to the current developments in sensors that are now able to collect this biometric. This type of investigation is known as “gaze analysis”. The gaze has successfully examined a subject's physical and mental status in the past. As a result, over the last few decades, a large and diverse amount of literature on this subject has been generated and presented. The aim of this study is to collect and debate current gaze analysis methods based on their application field. Due to the context-specific needs for performance and efficiency, the eye movements under research are frequently evaluated from completely distinct perspectives. As a result, a collection of data, methods, and discussions ranging from the medical community to virtual and augmented reality, as well as human computer interface and remote learning, has been produced. In addition to providing a peek of novel observation on the issue of gaze analysis, the gaps between and within areas are also discussed to provide points for researchers to pursue.

Foucault and Clinical Photography: An Analysis and Mitigation of the Clinical Gaze in Pediatric Craniofacial Plastic Surgery

While objectification in medicine has been extensively critiqued as a philosophical concept dating back to the Ancient Greeks and contemporarily popularized by Michel Foucault, the impact of objectification through clinical photography in plastic surgery is often overlooked. Plastic surgery patients are by necessity subjected to the clinical gaze through clinical photography, which may lead to experiences of dehumanization and alienation from their physicians and surgeons. In this essay, we explore the concept of the clinical gaze in clinical photography from a structured philosophical lens, and offer one potential answer to this problem. First, we draw upon Foucault’s well-known and monumental critique of contemporary Western medical practice from Birth of the Clinic alongside a brief history of clinical photography to illustrate the problem of the “clinical gaze.” Then, we argue that mitigating the clinical gaze is critical for the flourishing of patients in general and plastic surgery patients in particular. Finally, we offer our attempt to mitigate the clinical gaze that was conducted by the Craniofacial Anomalies Program at the University of Michigan in 2014 as a demonstration of an upending of the power dynamic usually at play.

Analysis of Gaze, Head Orientation, and Joint Attention in Autism With Triadic VR Interviews.

Effective use of gaze and head orientation can strengthen the sense of inclusion in multi-party interactions, including job interviews. Not making significant eye contact with the interlocutors, or not turning towards them, may be interpreted as disinterest, which could worsen job interview outcomes. This study aims to support the situational solo practice of gaze behavior and head orientation using a triadic (three-way) virtual reality (VR) job interview simulation. The system lets users encounter common interview questions and see how they share attention among the interviewers based on their conversational role (speaking or listening). Given the yaw and position readings of the VR headset, we use a machine learning-based approach to analyze head orientations relative to the interviewers in the virtual environment, and achieve low angular error in a low complexity way. We examine the degree to which interviewer backchannels trigger attention shifts or behavioral mirroring and investigate the social modulation of gaze and head orientation for autistic and non-autistic individuals. In both speaking and listening roles, the autistic participants gazed at, and oriented towards the two virtual interviewers less often, and they displayed less behavioral mirroring (mirroring the head turn of one avatar towards another) compared to the non-autistic participants.

Pose2Gaze: Eye-Body Coordination During Daily Activities for Gaze Prediction From Full-Body Poses.

Human eye gaze plays a significant role in many virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) applications, such as gaze-contingent rendering, gaze-based interaction, or eye-based activity recognition. However, prior works on gaze analysis and prediction have only explored eye-head coordination and were limited to human-object interactions. We first report a comprehensive analysis of eye-body coordination in various human-object and human-human interaction activities based on four public datasets collected in real-world (MoGaze), VR (ADT), as well as AR (GIMO and EgoBody) environments. We show that in human-object interactions, e.g. pick and place, eye gaze exhibits strong correlations with full-body motion while in human-human interactions, e.g. chat and teach, a person's gaze direction is correlated with the body orientation towards the interaction partner. Informed by these analyses we then present Pose2Gaze- a novel eye-body coordination model that uses a convolutional neural network and a spatio-temporal graph convolutional neural network to extract features from head direction and full-body poses, respectively, and then uses a convolutional neural network to predict eye gaze. We compare our method with state-of-the-art methods that predict eye gaze only from head movements and show that Pose2Gaze outperforms these baselines with an average improvement of 24.0% on MoGaze, 10.1% on ADT, 21.3% on GIMO, and 28.6% on EgoBody in mean angular error, respectively. We also show that our method significantly outperforms prior methods in the sample downstream task of eye-based activity recognition. These results underline the significant information content available in eye-body coordination during daily activities and open up a new direction for gaze prediction.

Characteristics of Visual Cognition in Patients with Anoxic Encephalopathy: An Eye-tracking Study.

: Despite the frequent occurrence of visual cognitive impairment after anoxic encephalopathy, only a few studies have analyzed gaze movements following encephalopathy. This study determined the visual cognitive characteristics of patients with anoxic encephalopathy using an eye-tracking system. : This study included ten patients with anoxic encephalopathy and ten age/sex-matched controls. Factors for anoxic encephalopathy onset and brain imaging findings were extracted from medical records. An eye-tracking system was used to track eye movements during three visual search tasks (pop-out, serial search, and saliency) in patient and healthy control groups. The average target search time, number of saccades, and number of fixations to salient stimuli were compared. : Stagnant blood flow, observed in six of ten patients, was the most common cause of disease onset, four of whom exhibited hypoperfusion in bilateral occipital or parietal lobes on single-photon emission computed tomography. The patient group required longer search times during all visual search tasks and a higher number of saccades during pop-out and serial search tasks. However, no significant difference was observed between the two groups for the number of fixations to salient stimuli during the saliency task. : Following anoxic encephalopathy, bottom-up (pop-out task) and top-down (serial search task) gaze control were considered impaired because of extensive parieto-occipital lobe damage after blood flow stagnation. Patients exhibited reduced top-down function for finding targets (serial search task) but relatively retain inhibitory function for salient stimuli (saliency task). Gaze analysis can be used to reveal the clinical characteristics of anoxic encephalopathy.

How does the male gaze construct our understanding of sexual power — using the example of Chinese film female characters

China's increasing development and the people's giowing reliance on online social networking have led to social phenomena on social media becoming more prominent and. to some extent, deepening. Nowhere is this more evident than in the phenomenon of misogyny and men-pleasing, a gender debate that has been ongoing unresolved for over a century. The subject of this research paper is an in-depth analysis of the male gaze and a critique of the solutions that have been proposed. The research perspective of this paper will be based on the dissection of the male gaze by Foucault and Laura Mulvey, as well as postmodem feminist perspectives, to present and judge the gender issues that exist and are potential. From a theoretical perspective, the male gaze inherently influences plot and characterization in film, and the latter functionally deepens the impression on the masses on a societal scale. On the other hand, from an ideological standpoint, it can be argued that cunent attempts to counteract and diminish the male gaze are overly one-sided and may actually deepen society's ambivalence towards this social issue.

Eye movement training and gaze analysis for a patient with binocular diplopia after traumatic brain injury: a case report

BackgroundPatients with traumatic brain injury often develop sequelae such as eye movement disorders, including diplopia. Eye movement training is effective in diplopia management. However, few longitudinal follow-up studies have been conducted from the subacute disease stage, owing to the complexity of methods for quantifying diplopia.Case presentationThe patient is a 30-year-old Japanese man who presented with diplopia and underwent eye movement training for approximately 4 weeks. The angle of diplopia, distance of abduction of the eye, gaze analysis, and self-assessment of diplopia using Holmes’ diplopia questionnaire were evaluated. The degree of diplopia increased from 12° to 40° on the right side. The distance of eye abduction increased from 10.4 to 12.8 mm. The self-assessment score improved from 76 to 12 points. Analysis of gaze transition revealed a reduction in the error between the target and gaze.ConclusionEye movement training was successful in ameliorating the symptoms of diplopia in the patient with binocular diplopia. Furthermore, for patients with diplopia symptoms, it was suggested that the oculomotor approach to eye movement training should not only focus on the direction of the diplopia but also on the direction opposite to the diplopia (the weak side).

Examining the Impact of Digital Human Gaze Expressions on Engagement Induction.

With advancements in technology, digital humans are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with their application scope widening to include interactions with real people. However, research on expressions that facilitate natural engagement in interactions between real people and digital humans is scarce. With this study, we aimed to examine the differences in user engagement as measured by subjective evaluations, eye tracking, and electroencephalogram (EEG) responses relative to different gaze expressions in various conversational contexts. Conversational situations were categorized as face-to-face, face-to-video, and digital human interactions, with gaze expressions segmented into eye contact and gaze avoidance. Story stimuli incorporating twelve sentences verified to elicit positive and negative emotional responses were employed in the experiments after validation. A total of 45 participants (31 females and 14 males) underwent stimulation through positive and negative stories while exhibiting eye contact or gaze avoidance under each of the three conversational conditions. Engagement was assessed using subjective evaluation metrics in conjunction with measures of the subjects' gaze and brainwave activity. The findings revealed engagement disparities between the face-to-face and digital-human conversation conditions. Notably, only positive stimuli elicited variations in engagement based on gaze expression across different conversation conditions. Gaze analysis corroborated the engagement differences, aligning with prior research on social sensitivity, but only in response to positive stimuli. This research departs from traditional studies of un-natural interactions with digital humans, focusing instead on interactions with digital humans designed to mimic the appearance of real humans. This study demonstrates the potential for gaze expression to induce engagement, regardless of the human or digital nature of the conversational dyads.