Gaze Based Personal Identification

Abstract

This chapter describes the use of visual attention characteristics as a biometric for authentication or identification of individual viewers. The visual attention characteristics of a person can be easily monitored by tracking the gaze of a viewer during the presentation of a known or unknown visual scene. The positions and sequences of gaze locations during viewing may be determined by overt (conscious) or covert (sub-conscious) viewing behaviour. Methods to quantify the spatial and temporal patterns established by the viewer for both overt and covert behaviours are proposed. The former behaviour entails a simple PIN-like approach to develop an independent signature while the latter behaviour is captured through three proposed techniques: a principal component analysis technique (‘eigenGaze’); a linear discriminant analysis technique; and a fusion of distance measures. Experimental results suggest that both types of gaze behaviours can provide simple and effective biometrics for this application.