A cost function to determine the optimum filter and parameters for stabilizing gaze data

• Main Author: Pieter Blignaut
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bern Open Publishing 2019-07-01
• Series: Journal of Eye Movement Research
• Subjects: Eye-tracking; Filters; Data quality; Accuracy; Precision; Latency
• Online Access: https://bop.unibe.ch/JEMR/article/view/4487

Prior to delivery of data, eye tracker software may apply filtering to correct for noise. Although filtering produces much better precision of data, it may add to the time it takes for the reporting of gaze data to stabilise after a saccade due to the usage of a sliding window. The effect of various filters and parameter settings on accuracy, precision and filter related latency is examined. A cost function can be used to obtain the optimal parameters (filter, length of window, metric and threshold for removal of samples and removal percentage). It was found that for any of the FIR filters, the standard deviation of samples can be used to remove 95% of samples in the window so than an optimum combination of filter related latency and precision can be obtained. It was also confirmed that for unfiltered data, the shape of noise, signified by RMS/STD, is around √2 as expected for white noise, whereas lower RMS/STD values were observed for all filters.