Geometric Adjustments to Account for Eye Eccentricity in Processing Horizontal and Vertical Eye and Head Movement Data

Abstract

Neglecting the eccentric position of the eyes in the head can lead to erroneous interpretation of ocular motor data, particularly for near targets. We discuss the geometric effects that eye eccentricity has on the processing of target-directed eye and head movement data, and we highlight two approaches to processing and interpreting such data. The first approach involves determining the true position of the target with respect to the location of the eyes in space for evaluating the efficacy of gaze, and it allows calculation of retinal error directly from measured eye, head, and target data. The second approach effectively eliminates eye eccentricity effects by adjusting measured eye movement data to yield equivalent responses relative to a specified reference location (such as the center of head rotation). This latter technique can be used to standardize measured eye movement signals, enabling waveforms collected under different experimental conditions to be directly compared, both with the measured target signals and with each other. Mathematical relationships describing these approaches are presented for horizontal and vertical rotations, for both tangential and circumferential display screens, and efforts are made to describe the sensitivity of parameter variations on the calculated results.