Lidblink artifacts in recordings of horizontal saccadic eye movements with the infrared reflection method: Analysis and presentation of a new monitoring technique

Abstract

In order to test the accuracy of lidblink artifact monitoring with EOG during recordings of horizontal saccadic eye movements by means of Infrared Reflection Oculography (IROG), the influences of EOG-recorded blinks of different size on amplitude, peak velocity, and duration of horizontal saccades were studied in ten healthy volunteers. During the study, a simpler blink monitoring technique was developed using IROG itself. in six subjects the conventional ‘retinoelectric’ (EOG) and the new ‘photoelectric’ (IROG) blink artifact monitoring methods were simultaneously employed. A comparison of the two methods showed that photoelectric blink monitoring not only is much simpler to install, but also yields less false positive, as well as less false negative results than retinoelectric monitoring. in addition, photoelectric monitoring gives a continuous control of the placement of the photo cells with respect to the horizontal plane, which is important to avoid asymmetric blink artifacts in the IROG recordings due to oblique photo cell placement.

Key Words:

• lidblink artifacts
• infrared reflection oculography (IROG)
• blink monitoring retinoelectric (EOG)
• blink monitoring photoelectric new (IROG)
• recording plane control new (IROG)