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Main Authors: Puri, Isha, Cox, David
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08183
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author Puri, Isha
Cox, David
author_facet Puri, Isha
Cox, David
contents Research in neuroscience and vision science relies heavily on careful measurements of animal subject's gaze direction. Rodents are the most widely studied animal subjects for such research because of their economic advantage and hardiness. Recently, video based eye trackers that use image processing techniques have become a popular option for gaze tracking because they are easy to use and are completely noninvasive. Although significant progress has been made in improving the accuracy and robustness of eye tracking algorithms, unfortunately, almost all of the techniques have focused on human eyes, which does not account for the unique characteristics of the rodent eye images, e.g., variability in eye parameters, abundance of surrounding hair, and their small size. To overcome these unique challenges, this work presents a flexible, robust, and highly accurate model for pupil and corneal reflection identification in rodent gaze determination that can be incrementally trained to account for variability in eye parameters encountered in the field. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that demonstrates a highly accurate and practical biomedical image segmentation based convolutional neural network architecture for pupil and corneal reflection identification in eye images. This new method, in conjunction with our automated infrared videobased eye recording system, offers the state of the art technology in eye tracking for neuroscience and vision science research for rodents.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_08183
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A System for Accurate Tracking and Video Recordings of Rodent Eye Movements using Convolutional Neural Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation
Puri, Isha
Cox, David
Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Research in neuroscience and vision science relies heavily on careful measurements of animal subject's gaze direction. Rodents are the most widely studied animal subjects for such research because of their economic advantage and hardiness. Recently, video based eye trackers that use image processing techniques have become a popular option for gaze tracking because they are easy to use and are completely noninvasive. Although significant progress has been made in improving the accuracy and robustness of eye tracking algorithms, unfortunately, almost all of the techniques have focused on human eyes, which does not account for the unique characteristics of the rodent eye images, e.g., variability in eye parameters, abundance of surrounding hair, and their small size. To overcome these unique challenges, this work presents a flexible, robust, and highly accurate model for pupil and corneal reflection identification in rodent gaze determination that can be incrementally trained to account for variability in eye parameters encountered in the field. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that demonstrates a highly accurate and practical biomedical image segmentation based convolutional neural network architecture for pupil and corneal reflection identification in eye images. This new method, in conjunction with our automated infrared videobased eye recording system, offers the state of the art technology in eye tracking for neuroscience and vision science research for rodents.
title A System for Accurate Tracking and Video Recordings of Rodent Eye Movements using Convolutional Neural Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation
topic Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08183