Pulse Medical Instruments

Michael Rothberg

Tom N Cornsweet

George Homsy

Ross J Beesmer

Marc D Rafal

Robert W Sibley

A fitness impairment tester implements a self-administered screening test to determine whether a subject is physically impaired. The tester is fully automated to respond to the entering of a subject's personal identification on a keypad. By superposing two different colored lights as viewed through an eyepiece, the subject aligns his or her pupil on the optical axis of pupil imaging optics which focuses an image of the subject's pupil on an image plane. The tester automatically recognizes this condition and audibly signals the subject that the test is about to begin. Light stimuli are provided to cause the pupil to change size and the eye to move. Pupil diameter measurements are made of the image of the subject's pupil in response to on axis light stimuli. Eye tracking of the subject's eye in response to moving light stimuli provide a measure of eye movements. The data acquired by measuring pupil diameter and saccadic movements of the subject's eye as a function of time are compared with baseline data for the subject stored in a database, and an output indicative of a deviation of said current measurements from said baseline data is provided.

Fitness impairment tester

An improved eye tracking system capable of accurately measuring fast eye movements, is controlled by a microprocessor and software to rapidly track a subject's eye movements. The hardware for the electro-optical tracking system includes a quadrant detector which detects the relative direction of movement of the subject's eye. The output of the quadrant detector is processed by the microprocessor under the control of three software subsystems. The first software subsystem is the servo tracking software which controls positioning motors that rapidly move a mirror mechanism which reflects light that forms an image of the subject's eye on the quadrant detector. The second software subsystem is the pupil recognition software which recognizes that an image of a pupil is present. The third software subsystem is the blink detection software which recognizes the presence of a blink and disables the servo tracking subsystem. These three software subsystems work together to insure accurate tracking of a subject's eye movements.

Eye tracking method and apparatus

A pupil function analyzer has three major subsystems; an electro-optical system, an electronic interface system and a computer/software system. The electro-optical system can, in turn, be described in terms of three subsystems; one that delivers controlled lights to the patient's eyes, another that forms images of the two pupils on a video camera, and a third that moves the optics to maintain alignment with the patient's eyes. The electronic interface system converts signals from the video camera into digital signals to be read by the computer and also responds to the computer to move motors for the maintenance of optical alignment and also operates the light stimuli. The computer/software saves and analyzes the signals sent by the electronic interface, controls the alignment motors, and provides an operator interface, so that the operator can select tests and examine the results.

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Foothill Ranch, CA, United States of America

Michael Rothberg