A study on human gaze estimation using screen reflection

Abstract

Many eye gaze systems use special infrared (IR) illuminator and choose IR-sensitive CCD camera to estimate eye gaze. The IR based system has the limitation of inaccurate gaze detection in ambient natural light and the number of IR illuminator and their particular location has also effect on gaze detection. In this paper, we present a eye gaze detection method based on computer screen illumination as light emitting source and choose high speed camera for image acquisition. In order to capture the periodic flicker patterns of monitor screen the camera is operated on frame rate greater than twice of the screen refresh rate. The screen illumination produced a mark on the corneal surface of the subject's eye as screen-glint. The screen reflection information has two fold advantages. First, we can utilize the screen reflection as screen-glint, which is very useful to determine where eye is gazing. Secondly the screen-glint information utilize to localized eye in face image. The direction of the user's eye gaze can be determined through polynomial calibration function from the relative position of the center of iris and screen-glint in both eyes. The results showed that our propose configuration could be used for gaze detection method and this will lead to increased gaze detection role for the next generation of human computer interfaces. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.