Heatmap overlay using neutral body model for visualizing the measured gaze distributions of observers


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[Abstract]
We propose a method for visualizing where an observer's gaze focuses on a subject in a still image using a neutral human body model. Generally, two-dimensional (2D) heatmaps are superimposed on still images to visualize an observer's gaze distribution, which indicates where an observer looks when observing a subject. To investigate gaze distributions, eye-tracking researchers need a method to directly compare the 2D heatmaps because body pose and shape differ among subjects. Thus, a comparison of the gaze distributions using the 2D heatmaps is time-consuming if there is no acceptable method to handle the body pose and shape variations. Instead, our visualization method superimposes a three-dimensional (3D) heatmap representing the gaze distribution on the surface of a neutral human body, which has a fixed pose and shape for all subjects to visualize the locations at which an observer's gaze focuses. Experimental results show that our visualization method allows eye-tracking researchers to compare gaze distributions more directly than the conventional visualization method using 2D heatmaps on still images.
[Publications]



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