Human eye sclera detection and tracking using a modified time-adaptive self-organizing map

This paper investigates the use of time-adaptive self-organizing map (TASOM)-based active contour models (ACMs) for detecting the boundaries of the human eye sclera and tracking its movements in a sequence of images. The task begins with extracting the head boundary based on a skin-color model. Then the eye strip is located with an acceptable accuracy using a morphological method. Eye features such as the iris center or eye corners are detected through the iris edge information. TASOM-based ACM is used to extract the inner boundary of the eye. Finally, by tracking the changes in the neighborhood characteristics of the eye-boundary estimating neurons, the eyes are tracked effectively. The original TASOM algorithm is found to have some weaknesses in this application. These include formation of undesired twists in the neuron chain and holes in the boundary, lengthy chain of neurons, and low speed of the algorithm. These weaknesses are overcome by introducing a new method for finding the winning neuron, a new definition for unused neurons, and a new method of feature selection and application to the network. Experimental results show a very good performance for the proposed method in general and a better performance than that of the gradient vector field (GVF) snake-based method. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.