MEYE: Web-app for translational and real-time pupillometry

Abstract

Pupil dynamics alterations have been found in patients affected by a variety of neuropsychiatric conditions, including autism. Studies in mouse models have used pupillometry for phenotypic assessment and as a proxy for arousal. Both in mice and humans, pupillometry is non-invasive and allows for longitudinal experiments supporting temporal specificity, however its measure requires dedicated setups. Here, we introduce a Convolutional Neural Network that performs on-line pupillometry in both mice and humans in a web app format. This solution dramatically simplifies the usage of the tool for non-specialist and non-technical operators. Because a modern web browser is the only software requirement, this choice is of great interest given its easy deployment and set-up time reduction. The tested model performances indicate that the tool is sensitive enough to detect both spontaneous and evoked pupillary changes, and its output is comparable with state-of-the-art commercial devices.

Detecting Lies is a Child (Robot)’s Play: Gaze-Based Lie Detection in HRI

“…The ideal solution would be to measure a full set of pupillometric features from the RGB cameras embedded on the robotic platform. Recent findings suggest that this approach could be feasible [43][44][45][46]74]; hence, we look forward to removing this limitation, making the system completely non-intrusive. Other than due to cognitive load changes, pupil dilation tends to be affected by other factors like excitement, stress, and environmental light conditions.…”

“…Both, mobile head mounted [39,40], and remote eye tracker [41,42] devices have been used as minimally invasive methods to measure pupillometric features, more appropriate for real-world scenarios. Recent research showed the possibility to measure TEPRs from RGB cameras, suitable for robotic platforms, making pupillometry a promising candidate to detect lies in real-life human-robot interactions [43][44][45][46].…”

Human vs Robot Lie Detector: Better Working as a Team?

“…To validate such multimodal system on our setup, aiming to port it to a real-world scenario, it would be mandatory to overcome the limitation posed by the Tobii Pro Glasses 2 eyetracker since it partially occludes actors' faces, limiting the usage of visual features. Recent findings [29] suggest it will be soon possible to measure pupillometric features with common RGB cameras like the ones embedded on the iCub robotic platform. Finally, it would be necessary to push the research field to more ecological and real-life scenarios.…”

Selective disruption of perineuronal nets in mice lacking Crtl1 is sufficient to make fear memories susceptible to erasure

“…During fear conditioning mice were head-xed and free to run on a circular treadmill. An infrared webcam was used to record the pupil and the MEYE Deep Learning tool was employed to perform pupillometry [23] (Fig. 2A).…”