An open-source software for the simulation of fixational eye movements

Laser-scanning confocal microscopy of the hu-
man cornea acquires in vivo images of corneal tissues with
cellular resolution, which offers diagnostic potential for a
variety of diseases. However, involuntary fixational eye
movements induce motion artefacts that pose a challenge
for accurate morphometric analysis and particularly for
preceding image data fusion steps. Different image reg-
istration algorithms promise to eliminate such artefacts,
but objective, quantitative evaluation of the registration
results is difficult because of the lack of ground truth data.
Simulation approaches offer a possibility to close this gap.
Existing open-source software for the simulation of fix-
ational eye movements is currently limited to creating
drift movement. The present contribution proposes com-
plementary models for microsaccade and tremor compo-
nents to provide complete simulated fixational eye move-
ment paths. In addition, it reports results from an exten-
sive examination of different model parameter combina-
tions. It is shown that the microsaccade model is capable
of reproducing intermicrosaccade intervals that closely re-
... mehr
semble experimental data. A software implementation is
provided as open-source Python modules.