Patent ID: 7362885

Claim:
A method of tracking movement of a human eye between first and second successively generated video images after a position of the eye in said first video image has been identified, comprising the steps of: defining a first state vector for the first video image corresponding to the identified position of said eye; defining a search window in said second video image based on said first state vector; bottom hat filtering said search window with a non-flat structuring element to form a filtered image; binarizing said filtered image and identifying candidate binary blobs that possibly correspond to said eye; computing a spatial Euclidian distance between each candidate binary blob and said first state vector, and selecting a candidate binary blob for which the computed spatial Euclidian distance is smallest; determining a center of mass of the selected binary blob; defining a second state vector based on said center of mass for identifying the location of said eye in said second video image; selecting candidate binary blobs in successively generated video images based on minimum spatial Euclidian distance; determining a size of the selected candidate binary blobs, and computing a change in size of successively selected candidate binary blobs; and determining an eye state designating either that said eye is open or that said eye is closed and a confidence that the determined eye state is accurate by applying a sign of said change in size and a previously determined eye state to a decision matrix when said change in size has a magnitude that exceeds a threshold magnitude.