SaFiDe: Detection of saccade and fixation periods based on eye-movement attributes from video-oculography, scleral coil or electrooculography data

Abstract

In this work we present SaFiDe, a deterministic method to detect eye movements (saccades and fixations) from eye-trace data. We developed this method for human and nonhuman primate data from video- and coil-recorded eye traces and further applied the algorithm to eye traces computed from electrooculograms. All the data analyzed were from free-exploration paradigms, where the main challenge was to detect periods of saccades and fixations that were uncued by the task. The method uses velocity and acceleration thresholds, calculated from the eye trace, to detect saccade and fixation periods. We show that our fully deterministic method detects saccades and fixations from eye traces during free visual exploration. The algorithm was implemented in MATLAB, and the code is publicly available on a GitHub repository. • The algorithm presented is entirely deterministic, simplifying the comparison between subjects and tasks. • Thus far, the algorithm presented can operate over video-based eye tracker data, human electrooculogram records, or monkey scleral eye coil data.

Keywords

• Saccade and fixation detection from eye-trace data (SaFiDe)