Blinking Eyes Detection to Monitor Drowsy Drivers Due to Fatigue Using MATLAB Cascade Object Detector

Road accidents are incidents that should be avoided. One of the contributing factors of road accidents occurrence is drowsiness while driving due to fatigue. In this project, fatigue and drowsiness of a person can be detected by looking at the eye area. Drowsy situations are dangerous especially when driving a vehicle over long distances. When a person starts to feel drowsy, the eyes will start to blink more frequently. This characteristic can be used to monitor a driver’s fitness level. In this project the Viola-Jones algorithm using MATLAB cascade object detector was used to detect the presence of blinking eyes. The algorithm is consisted of three phases which are, selection of Haar-like characteristics, integrating a picture into the whole, and Classifiers in a cascading fashion. A number of 29 samples images consisting of the condition fatigue face and non-fatigue face was used. The obtained results obtained were calculated based on the accuracy value of the detected blinking eye. The result shows that both the total Area Under the Curve (AUC) values for faces with fatigue situations and non-fatigue situations are above acceptable values which is 0.5. This indicates both classifications are acceptable and can be used to detect the presence of blinking eyes which represent drowsiness.

The evolution of natural systems - from the point of view of a philosopher.

According to the author, observed now natural polymorphism does not come down to the simplest neo-Darwinist constructions, but one way or another involves, as a provoking factor, the so-called "outside interference". Nevertheless, the indisputable fundamental role of the evolutionary principle is all the same visible literally at every step. This is both rather intricate genesis of prions, and microevolutionary shifts which, by the way, are taking place before our eyes (detection of new strains of bacteria and fungi resistant to various poisons or rare outlandish representatives of anaerobic and chemotrophic biota); just like the racial differences of people that, apparently, have been the best explained by J.-P. Lamarck who, alas, was then outcasted with almost the entire scientific world. Therefore, the natural progress is first of all, while creationism can, in general, be considered only as one of its tactical moves.

Fast eyes detection in thermal images

In recent years many methods have been proposed for eye detection. In some cases however, such as driver drowsiness detection, lighting conditions are so challenging that only the thermal imaging is a robust alternative to the visible light sensors. However, thermal images suffer from poor contrast and high noise, which arise due to the physical properties of the long waves processing. In this paper we propose an efficient method for eyes detection based on thermal image processing which can be successfully used in challenging environments. Image pre-processing with novel virtual high dynamic range procedure is proposed, which greatly enhances thermal image contrast and allows for more reliable computation of sparse image descriptors. The bag-of-visual-words approach with clustering was selected for final detections. We compare our method with the YOLOv3 deep learning model. Our method attains high accuracy and fast response in real conditions without computational complexity and requirement of a big dataset associated with the deep neural networks. For quantitative analysis a series of thermal video sequences were recorded in which eye locations were manually annotated. Created dataset was made publicly available on our website.

Assessment of Corneal Pachymetry Distribution and Morphologic Changes in Subclinical Keratoconus with Normal Biomechanics

Purpose. To investigate the pachymetry distribution of central cornea and morphologic changes in subclinical keratoconus with normal biomechanics and determine their potential benefit for the screening of very early keratoconus. Methods. This retrospective comparative study was performed in 33 clinically unaffected eyes with normal topography and biomechanics from 33 keratoconus patients with very asymmetric ectasia (VAE-NTB; Corvis Biomechanical Index defined) and 70 truly normal eyes from 70 age-matched subjects. Corneal topographic, tomographic, and biomechanical metrics were measured using Pentacam and Corvis ST. The distance and pachymetry difference between the corneal thinnest point and the apex were defined as DTCP-Apex and DPTCP-Apex, respectively, to evaluate the pachymetry distribution within the central cornea. The discriminatory power of metrics was analysed via the receiver operating characteristic curve. A logistic regression analysis was used to establish predictive models. Results. The parameters, DTCP-Apex and DPTCP-Apex, were significantly higher in VAE-NTB than those in normal eyes. For differentiating normal and VAE-NTB eyes, the Belin-Ambrósio deviation (BAD-D) showed the largest area under the curve (AUC; 0.799), followed by ARTmax (0.798), DTCP-Apex (0.771), tomography and biomechanical index (0.760), maximum pachymetry progression index (PPImax, 0.756), DPTCP-Apex (0.753), and back eccentricity (B_Ecc, 0.707) with no statistically significant differences among these AUCs. In the VAE-NTB group, the parameter B_Ecc was significantly and positively correlated with DTCP-Apex (P=0.011) and DPTCP-Apex (P=0.035), whereas the posterior elevation difference had a significant positive association with DPTCP-Apex (P=0.042). A model using the indices DTCP-Apex, B_Ecc, PPImax, and index of height asymmetry demonstrated the highest AUC of 0.846 with 91.43% specificity. Conclusions. Abnormal pachymetry distribution within the central cornea and subtle morphologic changes are detectable in subclinical keratoconus with normal biomechanics. This may improve VAE-NTB eyes detection.