A NOVEL METHOD FOR MEASURING SACCADE PROFILES USING THE SCANNING LASER OPHTHALMOSCOPE

Most existing techniques for accurately measuring angular eye position vs time during a saccade (the saccade profile) need either contact to the eye or are restricted in time resolution. In this paper we introd uce a new noninvasive method, with high spatial and temporal resolutio n, for determining saccade profiles using a scanning laser ophthalmosc ope (SLO). This method uses the fact that images of a moving object ta ken with the SLO are not blurred (as are images from video cameras) bu t show a tilt with respect to images of the same stationary object. A mathematical framework is given that allows determination of a saccade profile from a restricted number of consecutive SLO video fields of t he fundus during a saccade. The angular resolution obtained by this me thod is below 0.1 deg, and the maximum time resolution near 1 msec. Me asured saccade profiles could be well approximated by a gamma function , the first derivative of which yields the saccade velocity profile. M easurements of peak saccade velocity as a function of saccade amplitud es (main sequence) using our method show good agreement with results o btained by other authors. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.