An Approach to the EOG Signal Segmentation Based

on Fuzzy Reasoning
AbstractIn this paper we presented an approach to segmenta-
tion of an electrooculography (EOG) signal. For segmentation we
have used the elements of the fuzzy set theory. Results obtained
in our numerical experiments show usefulness of proposed
approach. Our method can be also used for the generating of
a learning set necessary for the neural networks or the fuzzy
neural systems training.
Index TermsEOG signal, signal segmentation, fuzzy reason-
ing, fuzzy clustering.
I. ITRODUCTION
The EOG signal is based on electrical measurement of the
potential difference between the cornea and the retina. The
cornea-retinal potential creates an electrical eld in the front
of a head. This eld changes in orientation as the eyeballs
rotate. The electrical changes can be detected by electrodes
which are placed near eyes. It is possible to obtain independent
measurements from each of the one pair of eyes. For a healthy
man, the movement of eyes is coupled in the vertical direction.
Then it is adequate to measure the vertical motion of only
single eye together with the horizontal motion of a pair of
eyes. The amplitude of EOG signal varies from 50 to 3500
V with a frequency range of about DC-100 Hz. Its behavior
is practically linear for gaze angles of 30
o
[1]. It should be
pointed out here that the variables measured in the human body
(any biopotentials) are almost always recorded with a noise
and often have a non-stationary features. Their magnitude
varies with time, even when all possible variables are under
control. This means that the variability of the EOG signals
depend on many factors that are difcult to determine [1].
The EOG signal can be recorded in a horizontal and
vertical direction of eye movement. This requires nearly six
electrodes which are placed in the front of a human face. An
eyelid movement (blink) introduces a change in the potential
distribution around the eye [2] [3]. Another way to record an
eye movements signal and eye blinks is an application based
on the different reection of the emitted infrared light from
eyelid and eyeball [5], [2].
Our aim is to detect these parts of the EOG signal, which
correspond to the saccadic eye movements. Saccadic parts of
the EOG signal distinguish on the signal as the small but rather
fast changes of amplitude. The saccade is the fastest movement
of an external part of the human body. The peak angular
speed of the eye during a saccade reaches up 1000 degrees
0 5 10 15
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
time [s]
Fig. 1. An example of the EOG signal. The amplitude of the signal has been
normalized.
per second. Saccades last from about 20 to 200 miliseconds
[4]. In this paper we report the initial stage of our work which
concerns problem of bulding humanmachine interface.
The methods of signal segmentation require the number of
segments as an initial parameter [6], [7]. In our approach to the
segmentation problem, the number of segments is not required
as an initial parameter.
The paper is divided into the following sections: Section II
describes proposed segmentation method. Section III presents
obtained results from our numerical experiments. Finally, in
setcion IV we draw some conclusions.
II. SEGMENTATION THE EOG SIGNAL
The EOG signal represents an alectric activity of the eyeball
muscles. An example of the electrooculography signal has
been presented in gure 1. Looking at the example of the
EOG signal, it can be found the rapid changes of aplitude
correspond with consciously eye movement to another part of
the scene. Between rapid amplitude changes small and rather
fast changes of amplitude can be observed. These parts of the
analyzed signal are called saccadic eye motions. Let us dene
the gradient of the EOG signal as
dx(n) = |x(n + 1) x(n)| , (1)
{tprzybyla, tpander, rczabanski}@polsl.pl
HSI 2008 Krakow, Poland, May 25-27, 2008
1-4244-1543-8/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE
Division of Biomedical Electronics, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland
Tomasz Przybya, Tomasz Pander, and Robert Czabanski
0 500 1000 1500
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
Fig. 2. The gradient of EOG signal.
where x(n) is the n th sample of the EOG signal, 1
n N 1, and N is the lenght of the signal. Analyzing the
gradient signal dx(n) the moment can be found, when large
aplitudes occur. It matches the change of observed object or
part of the scene. Hence, when the gradient values are small
then we deal with saccade movements. An example of the
EOG gradient signal has been presented in gure 2.
The notions large amplitude and small amplitude can be
interpreted from the fuzzy set theory point of view. So, we
can state that the interesting parts of analyzed signal occur
when the aplitudes of gradient signal are small.
Many fuzzy clustering methods can be utilized for the
estimation of the membership values. Namely, as clustering
results we obtain the membership grades for the clustered
data, and the cluster prototypes. Unfortunately, after clustering
process only the membership grades for the samples from the
input data set are known. When the input data set would be
changed, for some samples from the data set we could not
estimate the membership values. In the worst case, only for
few samples from the input data set we could estimate the
membership values. So, in this paper, instead of clustering
data for each analyzed signal, the Z(x) membership function
has been proposed in the following form:
Z(x) =

1 if x < a,
1 2

xa
ba

2
if a x
a+b
2
,
2

bx
ba

2
if
a+b
2
x b,
0 if x > b
(2)
An example shape of the Z membersip function has been
presented in gure 3.
The two parameters a and b can be computed in the
following way: for the clustered data set X and for the sets
dened as:
I
1
={i : 1 (x
i
) < , 1 i N}
I
0
={i : (x
i
) < , 1 i N}
, (3)
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
x
m
(
x
)
Fig. 3. Shape of the Z membersip function, where a = 0.5 and b = 1.5
the parameter values ca be estimated from
a =
1
|I
1
|

iI
1
x
i
,
b =
1
|I
0
|

iI
0
x
i
,
, (4)
The (x
i
) denotes the membership grade of the i-th sample
from the data set, x
i
X and 1 i N, the parameter
describes the tolerance limit explained further in this section.
The notations |I
1
| and |I
0
| correspond the cardinal numbers
of I
1
and I
0
sets, respectively.
After the clustering process, the membership values are
equal to one, only for these samples from the input data set
that are equal to the cluster prototype (i.e. the distance between
the samples and the prototype is equal to zero) [8] [9]. Hence,
for the estimation of the a parameter value, the obtained
cluster prototype value corresponds to small cluster can be
applied. For the methods that utilize the kernel functions a
problem occurs for the cluster prototype value determination.
Therefore, to avoid such kind of problems, we have proposed
another way for estimation the a parameter value.
The proposed equations (3) and (4) can be interpreted as a
mean of these samples, that have the membersip grades not
smaller than (1 ) for the problem of the a parameter value
estimation. The membership grades are not higher than the
treshold during the b parameter value estimation.
The segments (the saccade parts of the EOG signal) are
determined as these parts of the analyzed signal, for which the
membership values of the small fuzzy set of the gradient signal
exceed the treshold 0.5. Generally, when the membership
grade values exceed 1/c, where the c is the number of clusters.
After treshold procedure described above, the start point
and the end point of the obtained segments are different than
expected. So, as the nal stage of the processing the EOG
signal, the nearest local extrema of the EOG signal have been
chosen to the obtained points.
Generally, the proposed approach could be described as
follows:
Normalize the EOG signal, increase the amplitude of the
signal by 100 times,
711
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Fig. 4. The membership values for the small fuzzy set drawn by dots, and
for the large fuzzy set drawn by crosses
Compute the gradient signal,
Cluster the amplitudes of the gradient signal into two
groups: small amplitudes and large amplitudes,
For the small amplitudes fuzzy set compute the values of
the a and the b parameters of the Z membership function,
Chose these samples of the gradient signal which have
the membership grade to the small amplitudes fuzzy set
higher than 0.5,
Finally, nd the local extrema of the EOG signal and
chose these, that are nearest to the obtained points in the
previuos stage.
III. NUMERICAL EXPERIMENT
In this section, the example demonstrates the performance of
the proposed approach. In our investigations, the real, in vivo
acquired signal have been analyzed. As the data acquistion unit
we used the Biopack hardware. For the registration of eye
movements we have constructed a segment of LEDs placed
on sphere in 40 up to +40 degrees with 10 degrees step in
horizontal direction. The LEDs were displayed sequantially.
The proposed method has been applied to the raw signals. All
analyzed signals have not been preprocessed. The gradient
signal has been multiplied by 100 due to the roundoff
problems.
As rst stage of the EOG signal segmentation, the gradient
signal based on (1) has been estimated. Next, the gradient
values have been clustered into two groups corresponding to
the small amplitude and the large amplitude fuzzy sets. As
the clustering method, we used the familiar fuzzy cmeans
clustering method (FCM) proposed by Bezdek. The following
parameters have been xed for the clustering method:
the number of clusters c = 2,
the fuzzyer m = 2,
the tolerance for the FCM method = 10
5
.
The gradient clustering results have been sketched in gure 4.
After the clustering process, the a and the b parameter
values have been estimated. Value of the parameter has
been xed to = 10
3
. The comparison of the estimated
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Fig. 5. The comparison between the Z membership drawn by crosses and
obtained from clustering process drawn by dots
5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5
85
90
95
100
time [s]
Fig. 6. The obtained segments after the treshold process of the membership
grades. Short part of the analyzed EOG has been presented due to the problem
illustration. The segments are plotted as the horizontal lines, the beginnings
and the ends of the segments are plotted by crosses.
(Z) membersip function and the obtained membership values
for the small data set, has been shown in gure 5.
Applying the tresholding of the membership grades of the
gradient signal, we obtain the segments these parts of the
EOG signal which correspond to the saccade movements. Due
to readility, only small part of the segmented signal has been
presented in gure 7. The segments obtained in the last stage
of proposed algorithm have been shown in gure 7.
Finally, gure 8 presents the segmented EOG signal. The
saccade segments of the EOG signal have been plotted as
horizontal lines.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this work, a proposition of an approach to the segmen-
tation of an EOG signal has been introduced. The proposed
approach is based on the fuzzy logic. Our aim was to estimate
the position of the saccade parts. The proposed algorithm
deals with humanlike rules ie. the criterion can be described
by linguistic variables such as small, or large. It makes the
algorithm more general.
712
5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5
85
90
95
100
time [s]
Fig. 7. The beginnigs and the ends of the segments after the last processing
stage. The obtained local extrema are plotted as the crosses, and the segments
are plotted as the horizontal lines.
0 5 10 15
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
time [s]
6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10 10.5 11
65
70
75
80
85
90
95
100
time [s]
Fig. 8. The segmented EOG signal. The whole signal (a) and the short part
of the signal (b).
It should be mentioned, that no preprocessing has not been
applied. The recorded EOG signals were corrupted by noise,
and often the corruption signals have had the nonstationary
features.
In our future investigations we concern the preprocessing
stage. Specically, the question of kinds of lters (if any) used
for improvement of the nal results. Moreover, we touch on the
problem of estimation the signal slopes in the saccade parts,
and the problem of the inuence of blinking should also be
considered.
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