Patent ID: 8066375

Claim:
A system for automatically registering and tracking at least one eye of at least one subject, comprising: an optical system including an image sensor configured to register spatially distributed light and produce resulting primary data, and a lens structure configured to receive incoming light reflected from a scene containing the at least one subject and direct at least a portion of the incoming light towards the image sensor, the optical system having a basic optical transfer function by the image of a given piece of an object being projected onto an area of the image sensor, which is larger than a corresponding area in a classic imaging system; a processing unit configured to derive eye-tracking data based on the primary data, and wherein the optical system further comprises a mask which is arranged between the at least one subject and the image sensor, the mask is configured to alter the basic optical transfer function into an enhanced optical transfer function which is configured to spread an image from one point in space onto more than one sensor element on a sensor surface of the image sensor, and the enhanced optical transfer function is substantially less sensitive to variations of an unknown distance between the optical system and the at least one subject than the basic optical transfer function, and the processing unit is configured to receive the primary data and process the primary data to produce resulting eye-tracking data representing at least one of a position estimate of the at least one eye and a gaze direction for the at least one eye.