Communication via eye blinks - detection and duration analysis in real time

A method for a real-time vision system that automatically detects a user's eye blinks and accurately measures their durations is introduced. The system is intended to provide an alternate input modality to allow people with severe disabilities to access a computer. Voluntary long blinks trigger mouse clicks, while involuntary short blinks are ignored. The system enables communication using "blink patterns:" sequences of long and short blinks which are interpreted as semiotic messages. The location of the eyes is determined automatically through the motion of the user's initial blinks. Subsequently, the eye is tracked by correlation across time, and appearance changes are automatically analyzed in order to classify the eye as either open or closed at each frame. No manual initialization, special lighting, or prior face detection is required. The system has been tested with interactive games and a spelling program. Results demonstrate overall detection accuracy of 95.61% and an average rate of 28 frames per second.

[1]  Shin Yamamoto,et al.  BLINK MEASUREMENT BY IMAGE PROCESSING AND APPLICATION TO WARNING OF DRIVER'S DROWSINESS IN AUTOMOBILES , 1998 .

[2]  Shumin Zhai,et al.  Manual and gaze input cascaded (MAGIC) pointing , 1999, CHI '99.

[3]  LUIGI STRINGA,et al.  Eyes detection for face recognition , 1993, Appl. Artif. Intell..

[4]  Irfan A. Essa,et al.  Detecting and tracking eyes by using their physiological properties, dynamics, and appearance , 2000, Proceedings IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. CVPR 2000 (Cat. No.PR00662).

[5]  James W. Davis,et al.  The Representation and Recognition of Action Using Temporal Templates , 1997, CVPR 1997.

[6]  James L. Crowley,et al.  Multi-modal tracking of faces for video communications , 1997, Proceedings of IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

[7]  James Gips,et al.  Using EagleEyes—an electrodes based device for controlling the computer with your eyes—to help people with special needs , 1996 .

[8]  Margrit Betke,et al.  THE CAMERA MOUSE: PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF AUTOMATED VISUAL TRACKING FOR COMPUTER ACCESS , 2000 .

[9]  Margrit Betke,et al.  Active Detection of Eye Scleras in Real Time , 2000 .

[10]  Richard B. Reilly.  Applications of face and gesture recognition for human-computer interaction , 1998, MULTIMEDIA '98.

[11]  R.J.K. Jacob,et al.  Hot topics-eye-gaze computer interfaces: what you look at is what you get , 1993, Computer.

[12]  Carlos Hitoshi Morimoto,et al.  Real-time multiple face detection using active illumination , 2000, Proceedings Fourth IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (Cat. No. PR00580).

[13]  Hiroshi Ueno,et al.  Development of drowsiness detection system , 1994, Proceedings of VNIS'94 - 1994 Vehicle Navigation and Information Systems Conference.

[14]  Ravi Kothari,et al.  Detection of eye locations in unconstrained visual images , 1996, Proceedings of 3rd IEEE International Conference on Image Processing.

[15]  Takeo Kanade,et al.  Dual-state parametric eye tracking , 2000, Proceedings Fourth IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (Cat. No. PR00580).