Diagnosing Traumatic Brain Injuries

EyeTech also licenses its software to several groups and companies which integrate eye tracking technology into non-EyeTech hardware systems, for a number of other exciting industries. Using EyeTech technology to perform the King Devick Test (K-D), organizations like the Canadian Football League, National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer have been able to analyze their athletes for suspected traumatic brain injuries (TBI)—the most common injury being concussions—simply by observing how players’ eye movements deviate from pre-established normal behavior (Figure 1).

Figure 1: By tracking a user’s eye movements the King-Devick test which provides a pattern for the eye to navigate, can be used to detect head or brain injury.

More than 50 percent of the human cortex is used to process visual information and eye tracking is now being used to help provide insights into the brain in a fast and non-invasive way.³ Athletes, however, are certainly not the only people who will inevitably suffer from head injuries. The CDC reported that approximately 1.7 million people sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year between the years 2002 and 2006 and that a TBI is a contributing factor to about one third of all injury-related deaths in the US. ⁴ In addition to detecting concussions, it has been shown that eye tracking is able to very accurately diagnose other neurological conditions. Groups from Arizona State and Boston University have even used this technology to assess the signs of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease as well. ^{5, 6}

EyeTech’s eye tracking technology may also be found in a wide range of other applications including iris identification, testing website usability, integration into devices such as smart phones, tablets, televisions, kiosks, and virtual/augmented reality headsets, and analyzing Super Bowl Commercials.