The evaluation of eye blinking has been used for the diagnosis of neurological disorders and fatigue. Despite the extensive literature, no objective method has been found to analyze its kinematic and dynamic behavior. A non-contact technique based on the high-speed recording of the light reflected by the eyelid in the blinking process and the off-line processing of the sequence is presented. It allows for objectively determining the start and end of a blink, besides obtaining different physical magnitudes: position, speed, eyelid acceleration as well as the power, work and mechanical impulse developed by the muscles involved in the physiological process. The parameters derived from these magnitudes provide a unique set of features that can be used to biometric authentication. This possibility has been tested with a limited number of subjects with a correct identification rate of up to 99.7%, thus showing the potential application of the method.
14 January 2013 in Clinical and Experimental Optometry
Purpose The aim of this study is to determine the reliability of corneal thickness measurements derived from SOCT Copernicus HR (Fourier domain OCT). Methods Thirty healthy eyes of 30 subjects were evaluated. One eye of each patient was chosen randomly. Images were obtained of the central (up to 2.0 mm from the corneal apex) and paracentral (2.0 to 4.0 mm) cornea. We assessed corneal thickness (central and paracentral) and epithelium thickness. The intra‐observer repeatability data were analysed using the intra‐class correlation coefficient (ICC) for a range of 95 per cent within‐subject standard deviation (SW) and the within‐subject coefficient of variation (CW). The level of agreement by Bland–Altman analysis was also represented for the study of the reproducibility between observers and agreement between methods of measurement (automatic versus manual). Results The mean value of the central corneal thickness (CCT) was 542.4 ± 30.1 μm (SD). There was a high intra‐observer agreement, finding the best result in the central sector with an intra‐class correlation coefficient of 0.99, 95 per cent CI (0.989 to 0.997) and the worst, in the minimum corneal thickness, with an intra‐class correlation coefficient of 0.672, 95 per cent CI (0.417 to 0.829). Reproducibility between observers was very high. The best result was found in the central sector thickness obtained both manually and automatically with an intra‐class correlation coefficient of 0.990 in both cases and the worst result in the maximum corneal thickness with an intra‐class correlation coefficient of 0.827. The agreement between measurement methods was also very high with intra‐class correlation coefficient greater than 0.91. On the other hand the repeatability and reproducibility for epithelial measurements was poor. Conclusion Pachymetric mapping with SOCT Copernicus HR was found to be highly repeatable and reproducible. We found that the device lacks an appropriate ergonomic design as proper focusing of the laser beam onto the cornea for anterior segment scanning required that patients were positioned slightly farther away from the machine head‐rest than in the setup for retinal imaging.
We present a noninvasive technique for high-speed measuring of eye retraction and eyelid position during blinking. The anterior chamber of the eye is illuminated by the slit lamp of a biomicroscope and eye dynamics during a blinking sequence are captured with a high-speed camera working at 500 frames per second. Digital image processing allows quantitative analysis of cornea and eyelid positions during the closing and opening phases of the blinking process. Our method allows simultaneous measuring of corneal retraction, duration of down and up phases, total blinking duration, and average and peak speeds of the eyelids in both phases, thus providing a complete analysis of the blink’s transversal motions.
Spontaneous eye blinking is a complex process, which implies the joint actions of the eyelid muscles and the eye globe. These actions provoke the eyelid closure and simultaneous eye retraction into the orbit. Recently, the authors presented a non-invasive technique for measuring both movements that permits calculating several parameters. Following the work from Malbouisson and co-workers, we have fitted the displacement curves of the eyelid to an analytical function and, additionally, we have extended the kinematic model to the eye retraction movements. As a result of the fitting, some dynamic parameters have been presented for the first time in the literature. This study can be easily extended to obtain relevant information about ocular biomechanical properties in physiological optics and provides results that may be of interest in neurophysiology, in order to understand the blinking mechanism.This work was supported by the Generalitat Valenciana project no. GV/2009/002 and by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación through the project no. FIS2009-05639-E/FIS. J. Espinosa acknowledges the support of the Generalitat Valenciana through the project BEST/2010/209. D. Mas acknowledges the support of the Ministerio de Educacion through the project PR2009-0377