Iris Center Corneal Reflection Method for Gaze Tracking Using Visible Light

Very few attempts, if any, have been made to use visible light in corneal reflection approaches to the problem of gaze tracking. The reasons usually given to justify the limited application of this type of illumination are that the required image features are less accurately depicted, and that visible light may disturb the user. The aim of this paper is to show that it is possible to overcome these difficulties and build an accurate and robust gaze tracker under these circumstances. For this purpose, visible light is used to obtain the corneal reflection or glint in a way analogous to the well-known pupil center corneal reflection technique. Due to the lack of contrast, the center of the iris is tracked instead of the center of the pupil. The experiments performed in our laboratory have shown very satisfactory results, allowing free-head movement and no need of recalibration.