A new method of saccadic eye movement detection for optokinetic nystagmus analysis

The analysis of eye movements is valuable in both clinical work and research. One of the characteristic type of eye movements is saccade. The accurate detection of saccadic eye movements is the base for further processing of saccade parameters such as velocity, amplitude and duration. This paper concerns an accurate saccade detection method that is based on pre-processing signal and then the proposed non-linear detection function can be applied. The described method characterizes less sensitivity for any kind of noise due to an application of the robust myriad filter which is used to eliminate baseline drifts and impulsive artifacts. The congenital nystagmus is one of the field where our method can be applied to detect saccades. The proposed detection function is computationally efficient and precisely determines the time position of saccadic eye movements even when the signal-to-noise ratio is low. The presented method may have potential application in automatic ENG signal processing systems for determining visual acuity.