The Eye Mouse, An Eye Communication Device

Gregg Norris, MSEE and Eric Wilson, MSEE Abstract

The Eye Mouse is a communication aid designed for the severely disabled. Specifically, it provides the user with a means to control an ordinary PC mouse with a combination of eye movements and blinks. By constantly monitoring the electrooculogram signal (EOG) of the user, the Eye Mouse (EM) is able to recognize several intentional eye motions and in turn, control a cursor on the PC screen.

charged than the region below the eyes. The opposite is true if the person looks down. Looking to the right will cause the region to the right of the eyes to become more positive and vice versa if the person looks to the left. When a person blinks, the eyes actually roll up for a split second while the lids are closed. This produces an EOG signal similar to looking up. These potential differences are on the order of lOOpV and can be transduced by scalp electrodes and detected by an instrumentation amplifier.
LEFT / RIGHT

INTRODUCTION For thousands of people, an extreme disability such as severe cerebral palsy or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) deprives them of the use of their limbs and facial muscles. It is extremely difficult to express themselves through speech or bodily movement. In many cases, diseases such as these can damage a majority of the nervous and muscular systems in the body, but leave the brain and eye movement unimpaired. If eye motion is unaffected, the person could rely on eye movement for communication. Fortunately, a biopotential phenomenon called the electrooculogram (EOG) allows eye movements to be detected with simple electronic instrumentation. The Eye Mouse (EM) detects changes in the EOG that results from looking up, down, left, or right [ 13. These changes in eye position correspond to cursor movements on a computer screen. Once the cursor has reached its target, the user can also initiate a single or double mouse "click" by blinking twice or three times respectively. Because the EM effectively simulates a standard Microsoft mouse, no additional software or hardware is needed on the PC. The EM is simply plugged into the serial port where the mouse would normally be and it communicates with any Microsoft mouse driver already on the PC. In order to provide a communication link for the disabled user, the EM could control commercially available writing aids designed for disabled persons. METHODS The EOG encompasses all the changes in potential which emanate from the eye orbit during eye movement. This microvolt signal propagates through the extra cellular fluid in the head and is easily detected with instrumentation connected to scalp electrodes on the face. When a person looks up, the region above the eyes becomes more positively 0-7803-3848-0/97/$10.00 0 1997 IEEE 66

DOWN / UP

Figure 1 - Bipolar electrode placement, system layout

The EM requires five standard silver-silver chloride (AgAgCI) electrodes to be strategically placed on the face for correct operation. The correct electrode placement is shown in Figure 1. Two electrodes placed on either temple detect horizontal eye movement and electrodes at forehead and chin are used to detect vertical eye movement and blinks. The fifth electrode is a ground reference that is placed on the mastoid bone behind the ear. When each electrode is prepared, the DC resistance between any two electrodes should be under 10-kQ to ensure sufficient conduction between the skin and the electrode. In addition to amplifying the EOG signal, the instrumentation in each channel also removes the DC component of the signal. This is done to remove all the DC artifacts that corrupt the EOG signal such as: Variations in skin thickness, skin conductivity, electrode placement, and the drying of the electrode gel over time. It is important to note that in addition to removing this DC artifact, the instrumentation also removes the DC component of the EOG signal itself. Currently, other EOG control systems exist but unlike the EM, they rely on direct gaze mapping for control. EOG control systems that rely upon directly mapping the eye

position to cursor position cannot filter this DC artifact out [2]. As a result they must incorporate sophisticated instrumentation and software to try and null out the DC artifact while trying to preserve the EOG signal. Furthermore, these systems must rely upon complex calibration procedures that match eye position to cursor position. All of this overhead associated with direct gaze mapping makes these systems expensive and unreliable. By contrast, the EM employs a simple eye movement detection technique that does not require direct gaze mapping for cursor control. The operational protocol of the EM is as follows: If the person wants to move the cursor in a particular direction (up, down, left, right), the person merely has to divert their gaze by approximately 30 in the desired direction for 112 a second. After the cursor is moving, it continues to move in that direction. In order to stop the cursor, the user must make two successive blinks separated by about 114 of a second. Once the cursor is stopped, two more blinks will activate a single mouse click or three more blinks will activate a double mouse click. Single blinks will be ignored since they will be produced randomly by the user. Furthermore, when a cursor is moving, the EM will ignore all EOG signals except for a double blink that will cause the cursor to stop. Also, when the user changes their gaze to another part of the screen, the resulting EOG is ignored since its magnitude is too small. This allows the user to freely look over the screen without activating a cursor movement by mistake.
A potential problem in the analysis of the EOG signal is the variation of the overall EOG signals amplitude from one user to another. Differences in the positions of peoples eyes and the shapes of their heads can cause variation in the size of an EOG signal for a given change in eye position. Variations in electrode placement and preparation can also affect the amplitude of the EOG. To make the system robust, the EM is only driven by the change or differential in the EOG signal. For example, if a person suddenly looks down, there will be a positive steep slope in the resulting EOG followed by a negative steep slope when the person looks back to the screen. This steep positive and negative slope must each last 0.1 seconds in order to trigger a downward cursor movement. In short, the EM only pays attention to the characteristic EOG slopes generated when a person deliberately diverts their gaze by 30 or blinks. As a result, the EM is effectively immune to substantial EOG amplitude variation due to electrode contact, placement, dryness, and facial structure differences.
RESULTS

necessary to move a cursor in a desired trajectory are shown. First, the cursor is moved up, then right, down, and left. At the end, the mouse button is clicked once, then twice. It took the EM about 20 seconds to complete this trajectory.
d
b

Figure 2 - Cursor trajectory and corresponding EOG signals

DISCUSSION The Eye Mouse allows the user to mimic the actions of an ordinary PC mouse with the movements of their eyes and could greatly enhance commercially available software packages for severely disabled people. Several aspects of the design make the EM a substantial improvement over other EOG systems that have been published . These include: Immunity to most of the DC artifacts found in the EOG signal, compatible with a standard PC serial port, and low parts cost (hundreds of dollars). REFERENCES [ l ] Norris, G., Wilson, E., The Eye Mouse, An Ocular Prosthesis, Circuit Cellar Ink, The Computer Applications Journal, Issue 59, pp. 20-27, June, 1995. [2] Kaufman et al., Apparatus and Method For Eye Tracking Interface, United States Patent, Patent Number
5,360,971,1 9 pages, Nov. 1, 1994.

An example describing the communication protocol for the EM is shown in Figure 2. In this description, the signals

Ed. Note: Gregg Norris and Eric Wilson currently work at Varian Ion Implant Systems. They may be reached at gregg.norris@iis.varian.com and eric.wilson@iis.varian.com

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