Eyes are the main organs of the visual system. Unfortunately, some people face different problems with their visual system. Some are born blind, some color-blind, some with weak vision etc. For most people, even if they are not born with a problem in their visual system, they come across other visual problems during life; for example, as people age, they start to have a weaker vision. Eyes are connected with other organs on our body too, which means that a problem in our eyes might also cause problems in other organs in our body. One of the main organs that is most affected by eye problems is mind. As every living creature, people move their head to get a better vision of the view, but moving the head might be accompanied with headaches. Two of the reports that I have chosen to analyze are related to these two topics. The third report that I have chosen is about visual attention regions vs saliency maps based on eye tracker. In other words, in these experiments scientists showed the difference between visual attention regions (which is a mechanism that the nervous system uses to highlight specific locations, objects within a visual field) and saliency maps (which is a computer vision of an image that shows each pixel’s unique quality).

The first report is titled The use of handheld marker to calibrate a field-programmable gate array-based eye tracker for artificial vision system. This was an experiment done on blind people. Patients wore glasses- mounted trackers and this device was connected to their pupil. Patients were asked to locate different visions and this experiment showed an improvement in their precision on locations tasks.

The second report is titled Combined Eye-Head vs. Head-Only Scanning in Blind Patient Implanted with the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis. Patients that participated in this experiment used the Argus II retinal prosthesis (glasses with an image-capturing camera). This device is not affected by the eye movement, but only by the head movement. As the result of this experiment, the head movement amplitude was less while doing the eye-head scanning, compared to head-only scanning. This is a demonstration that eye movement can be used in combination with head movements to steer the line of sight of a camera-based retinal prosthesis.

The third report is titled The contrast experiment on Visual Attention Regions and Saliency Maps Based on the Eye Tracker. This experiment was done to record and analyze the visual attention regions of images based on an eye tracker. The result of the experiment shows a high consistency of visual attention regions and saliency regions defined by saliency maps.

Abstract

        The Abstract of a report is a summary of the whole report. It gives a short information about the report, like the topic, what will the experiment include, and what are the results of the experiment.

The first report gave very brief information in the Abstract. It was very clear what the report would be about and how the experiment would proceed. Also, the summary of the result was short, and it gave the reader enough information to understand if the experiment was successful or not. The Abstract of the first report starts with “Tracking the eye of a blind patient can enhance the usability of an artificial vision system.” (Caspi, et al., 2020, p. 3323) It starts with a short sentence that gives a lot of information. From this sentence, the reader learns about the type of people that are participating in this experiment (blind people). The Abstract also stated “In using the eye tracker with the proposed calibration method, patients demonstrated improved precision on the localization task with corresponding reduction of head movements.” (Caspi, et al., 2020, p. 3323) From this sentence, it is obvious that the experiment was successful, and the results were positive.

The second report gave a lot of information about the report, but it was unclear for some readers. In the first sentence “The Argus II retinal prosthesis has a dissociation between the line of sight of the camera and that of the eye.” (Caspi, et al., 2017, p.29), it mentions Argus II retinal prosthesis, but it does not give an explanation of what it is. It is very confusing for a reader who sees it for the first time. The reader does not know if it is a device, a system, or a method. “Results suggest that during combined eye-head scanning, head movement amplitude was significantly less than in the current used head-only scanning.” (Caspi, et al., 2017, p.29), is a sentence from the Abstract part. The problem about this is that it doesn’t show if the experiment was successful or not. It shows the result, but not what it means. Again, for a reader who is not into this field, it is unclear of what this sentence means, and what was the purpose of the experiment.

The third report’s abstract is short, and it doesn’t give enough information about the report. “In this paper, an experimental system is realized to record and analyze the visual attention regions of images based on an eye tracker.” (Lan, Li, Meng & Zheng, et al., 2014, p.830) and “Experimental results show a high consistency of visual attention regions and saliency regions defined by saliency maps.” (Lan, Li, Meng & Zheng, et al., 2014, p.830), are two out of four sentences in the Abstract part of this report. These two sentences would have been more effective if it was given a definition for uncommon used words. For a reader who is not involved in this field and reads these words for the first time, it is confusion about the purpose of the experiment and what it is about.

Out of three reports, the first report had a better Abstract. It was very clear and gave more information about the report. The second and third reports had in common the non-giving explanation/definition of uncommon used words. Also, for both these reports, the results did not inform the reader if the experiment was successful or not.

Introduction

          In the Introduction part, the context of the experiment is given. This is also called the background part. If in the Abstract part there are mentioned uncommon used words, here is the part where the definition of those words is given. Also, the purpose of the experiment is stated here.

All three reports were able to introduce the topic and the purpose in a very effective way. In all of there we see discussions about other reports that were used to lead to each report. For example: “Previously [9], we demonstrated that using a non-mobile based eye tracker, we can restore scanning abilities of artificial vision by eye movements.” (Caspi, et al., 2020, p. 3323) , informs us about another report done before, and the results of the previous report were used for the report that the reader has in front of them. “[9]” means that from the references at the end of the report, this particular report is in reference number 9, so if the reader wants to have more information about the previous report, they can check the references. The same thing is done even for two other reports. This method is very effective, because it consumes less space in the introduction, but it also offers a way to learn more about the report.

In the first report, “Herein we demonstrate that an eye tracker based on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA).”, (Caspi, et al., 2020, p. 3323) , and in the third report, “Research on visual attention regions includes regions of interest (ROI), saliency maps and eye movement”, (Lan, Li, Meng & Zheng, et al., 2014, p.830), it’s been applied shortcuts, that is not seen in the introduction for the second lab report. These shortcuts are later used for the rest of the report, and it makes it easier for the reader to catch what the experiment will be about, instead of reading the whole words.

Even though Introduction is supposed to give a detailed description of the topic and to give the definition of scientific words, in all three reports, this task was not completed. A lot of scientific words were not explained, and it was very confusing to keep reading it, and to understand what those words meant. For example: “Stimulating the same position in retinotopic coordinates can create precepts at different world-based coordinates, depending on the patient’s gaze position.” (Caspi, et al., 2020, p. 3323), the word retinotopic coordinates doesn’t have the definition anywhere in this sentence or somewhere else in the report.

Methods/Experiment Design

          In this section is explained in detail every step of the experiment, including every material that is used and how the data was collected. For all reports, this section was divided in 3-4 subsections. This is a very effective way to help the reader understand the experiment. Each subsection is named in a way that gives information about the part of the experiment that will be discussed is this particular subsection.  One subsection from the first report (A. Eye tracker and calibration) had two graphs and one subsection from the second report (A. The patient and the Argus II system) had one picture, a picture of the Argus II system. Since in the introduction section, a lot of scientific words were not explained, this problem led to this section too, by making subsections a little bit more difficult to understand. Subsections that had a graph or picture were easier to absorb the idea and the experiment, compared to other subsections where the experiment was shown only by words.

Overall, even though the experiments were separated from each other and explained briefly for each report, it was not very effective, since a lot of words did not have the definition and they were not accompanied with pictures, graphs and/or tables, for the data that was collected.

Results

          This section follows the work done by the previous section. In the previous section the reader is introduced to the experiments that are done and with the materials that are used. In this section, called Results, the reader gets information about the data that has been collected by the experiments. For different reports, this section is organized in different forms. Some results are presented in tables, graphs, or in paragraphs. For the first report, the results are presented just with two tables, but for the second report this section has two tables and two graphs. The third report has tables and pictures. When the result section presents the results form in experiments accompanied with pictures, graphs and/or tables, it makes it easier for the reader to understand it.

The problem with all three labs was the not mentioned what those results meant, and what was the purpose of doing these experiments and getting these results. For example: “We tested the implementation of the eye tracker using the localization task”, (Caspi, et al., 2020, p. 3324) states the experiment that is done but not the results. This sentence should have been placed in the previous section, that was about the experiment.

Conclusion

          In this section, the authors write about the experiments, the results that they got from the experiments and what the results mean. All three reports have completed this task and it is very clear that the experiments were successful and the scientists who did these experiments got the answers that they wanted to get. The conclusion part is short for all three reports, but it explains in the right way why the experiment was done and what was beneficial from that.

In conclusion, all three reports did not give enough information at the beginning, and it made it more difficult for the reader to understand what was going on and what was the purpose of these reports, but at the end, at the conclusion section, a brief explanation was given, and it was easier to absorb the information, comparing to other parts of the reports.

 

 

 

 

References:

Caspi, A., Roy, A., Barry, M. P., Sadeghi, R., Kartha, A., & Dagnelie, G. (2020). The use of handheld marker to calibrate a field-programmable gate array based eye tracker for artificial vision system.(pp. 3323-3326, Rep.).International IEEE. https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9175803.

Caspi, A., Rosendall, P. E., Harper, J. W., Barry, M. P., Katyal, K. D., Dagnelie, G., & Roy, A. (2017, May 28). Combined Eye-Head vs. Head-Only Scanning in a Blind Patient Implanted with the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis. (Vol. 8^th, pp. 29-32, Rep.). Shanghai, China: International IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering. https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8008284.

Zheng, Y., Lan, X., Li, J., & Meng, F. (2014). The Contrast Experiment on Visual Attention Regions and Saliency Maps Based on the Eye Tracker.(Vol. 11^th, pp.830-834, Rep.). Beijing, China: International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery   https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6980945.