Building interactive eyegaze menus for surgery

A real-time hands-free eyegaze menu selection interface was implemented using a commercially available eyetracking system, with selections activated by eyegaze fixations and glances on menu widgets. A pilot study tested three different spatial layouts of the menu widgets and employed a highly accurate two-stage selection mechanism. Improvements based on the pilot results were incorporated into a second revision of the interface with a more streamlined selection mechanism which allowed us to test users' selection accuracy. Another study was conducted on the revised interface and received a positive response from our participants in addition to a faster selection while maintaining high selection accuracy. A software framework was created for building eyetracking applications which provides basic eyetracking and interaction features in a modular format. The framework is also expandable to include more features by adding customized modules. Two new applications built using the framework were evaluated to demonstrate its flexibility.