Gaze tracking system and method

An eye-tracking system for tracking the point of regard of a user's gaze comprising:

• camera means for acquiring a video image of the user's eye;
• support means, connected to the camera means, for fixing the relative physical positions of the camera means;
• compass and level sensing means for acquiring axial position data for the support means;
• video digitizing means, connected to the camera means, for a accepting the video image of the user's eye and converting the video image to a digital image;
• computer means electrically connected to the video digitizing means and attitude sensor means, further comprising a central processing unit, eye-tracking interface, a memory, a video display screen, and computer readable program code means stored in the memory, wherein the code means further comprising:
• first instruction means for determining the center of the user's eye within the digital image;
• second instruction means for correlating the determined center of the user's eye and the axial position of the attitude sensors to a point of regard on the display screen;
• third instruction means for accepting the correlated data and placing a display screen pointer at a position on the display screen substantially overlapping the point of regard;
• and
• fourth instruction means for providing the user with a display screen menu activated by eye movement;
• whereby the eye-tracking system positions a pointer on the video screen at a point of regard of the user's gaze, and provides the user with an eye movement activated method for selecting actions relative to the point of regard.

A computer useable medium having computer readable program code means embodied thereon, the computer readable program code means comprising:

• first instruction means for selecting an image coordinate space of the eye;
• second instruction means for determining RGB threshold values in accordance with a user selected representation of the digital pixel data corresponding to the selected image space;
• third instruction means for segregating the digital pixel data into two separate binary groups as first and second groups using the RGB threshold values as a discriminator;
• and
• fourth instruction means for determining the logical position of the center of the eye within the image space in accordance with the segregated data.