LiveTrack Lightning delivers accurate, precise estimates of eye rotation, Direction of Gaze coordinates and pupil size. The equipment is ideal for oculomotor research; it is easy and fast to setup and requires minimal calibration. Use it for recording saccade metrics, gaze contingent displays, and monitoring observer behaviour and pupil response during visual psychophysics and cognitive neuroscience experiments.

LiveTrack operates as a standalone system but also neatly integrates with the Display++ Touchscreen LCD monitor, AudioFile stimulus processor, and the other Tools for Vision Science in our range.

Easy setup and robust tracking

LiveTrack Lightning supports monocular and binocular eye tracking at up to 500Hz. It’s designed to be used with a simple chinrest, and easily copes with small head movements, so the participant remains relaxed and comfortable while producing robust, high quality data.

Lightning eye-tracking setup with display and chinrest

Dedicated processing: streams real-time data to your computer

Lightning connects to the LiveTrack Presto unit to generate the data; this is a compact embedded eye tracking system which interfaces to the stimulus computer by USB.

Livetrack Lightning data flow

In real-time, Presto automatically identifies the dark pupil and corneal reflections in each eye, then calculates eye rotation and Direction of Gaze.

Video images, tracked eye position and pupil size data are transferred to the stimulus computer via a high-speed, low latency USB interface. This approach means no extra processing load on the stimulus computer and no complicated real time programming is required.

Live video of participant

The live video from the Lightning module is combined with the tracking data from the Presto unit, then the composite stream made available to view on the Presto HDMI and USB interfaces.

Get instant feedback to learn how the observer is performing by plugging a standard LCD monitor into the Presto HDMI output. The USB video output is provided in UVC format just like a webcam; it can be viewed with the LiveTrack host software tools and captured by a range of third-party utilities.

Presto UVC

Very easy integration and synchronisation

The LiveTrack USB data interfaces are simple to integrate with MATLAB, Python and C on any computer regardless of the operating system; a simple API is provided to facilitate development of custom software. Also works with Presentation and ePrime and other third-party software. Plug&Play installation on Windows, MacOS or GNU/Linux with no proprietary drivers required. The Presto unit includes a full array of digital and analogue I/O to make it easy to trigger, synchronise and transfer the eye movement data to other equipment.

Performance

  • Measurement technique: Video. Detects dark pupil and first Purkinje image
  • Guaranteed sampling frequency: 60 – 500Hz with no dropped frames
  • Resolution: Down to 0.05°
  • Accuracy: 0.25° – 0.5°
  • Horizontal range: 30°
  • Allowable head movement: ±20mm
  • Measurement units: Fick, Helmholtz coordinates in degrees, and screen position in mm or pixels. Uncalibrated raw data is also available for your own custom calibration.

Imaging

  • Camera type: Digital CMOS sensor with integrated IR illumination
  • Infrared illumination wavelength: 940nm
  • Video format: USB3; USB UVC is streamed to the host computer for easy alignment of the Lightning unit and real-time feedback of the participant’s Direction of Gaze.

Supplied Software

  • LiveTrack Viewer for camera alignment, Direction of Gaze calibration, pupil size calibration. Supports data logging to file and real-time plots.
  • Toolbox for MATLAB
  • C API

Host System Requirements

  • USB 2 port
  • Windows 7 64-bit or later, Mac OS X 10.11 or later, 2015 GNU/Linux distribution or later