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Purchasing the right eye tracking system for your research can be a challenging process. Last week, we kicked off this process to understand your research and requirements for eye trackers with regard to your environment. Today, we will cover questions you should consider around measurement parameters, such as gaze sectors, intersections and accuracy.
When looking at Measurement Parameters, it is important to consider what data is relevant to your research objectives. Nearly all eye tracking systems will provide eye gaze vectors, but some eye trackers leave it up to the researcher to calculate where the gaze is intersecting the environment.
However, a few systems can provide not only gaze vectors but also gaze intersections with real-world objects. One of the advantages of Smart Eye’s most advanced eye tracking system, Smart EyePro, is that it has a 3D world model which is a wire-frame representation of the test environment. Not only does Smart Eye Proprovide the eye gaze vectors, it also provides the intersection points/locations on the world model where the gaze intersects it.
This can be extremely advantageous, as you will see further detailed in our latest eBook on eye tracking technology. If your research involves assessing drowsiness or workload, you will want a tracking system that can not only provide eye gaze data but can also provide critical measurements such as eye opening data (inc. blinks), head position and rotations, as well as pupillometry.
Another key question to ask is what level of accuracy is needed for your projects. Accuracy levels can range significantly depending on the system you choose. Sometimes, an estimated gaze with lower accuracy is acceptable, which can often savecost. If cost is a concern, systems with lower accuracy or lower camera image-capture rates are inherently cheaper as they are technologically easier to create, orare just simply priced cheaper as a way of market competition advantage. But there are many other factors that should also be considered.
For instance, if you are interested in saccades or micro-saccades, you should consider a system that offers a higher sampling rate. This is because saccades happen in short time intervals, and microsaccades in even shorter time intervals. In order to capture these small time intervals, a higher sampling rate (image capture rate)is required. Sampling rates canrange from 30 Hz to >1000 Hz.
Learn more in our latest e-book, where we will cover more on advanced features and capabilities to consider when looking at eye tracking systems.
