Night Eyes: A Reproducible Framework for Constellation-Based Corneal Reflection Matching
Organizations: Human-Centered Technologies for Learning, Technical University of Munich Munich, Germany · Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML) Munich, Germany
Abstract
Corneal reflection (glint) detection plays an important role in pupil-corneal reflection (P-CR) eye tracking, but in practice it is often handled as heuristics embedded within larger systems, making reproducibility difficult across hardware setups. We introduce a 2D geometry-driven, constellation-based pipeline for mulit-glint detection and matching, focusing on reproducibility and clear evaluation. Inspired by lost-in-space star identification, we treat glints as structured constellations rather than independent blobs. We propose a Similarity-Layout Alignment (SLA) procedure which adapts constellation matching to the specific constraints of multi-LED eye tracking. The framework brings together controlled over-detection, adaptive candidate fallback, appearance-aware scoring, and optional semantic layout priors while keeping detection and correspondence explicitly separated. Evaluated on a public multi-LED dataset, the system provides stable identity-preserving correspondence under noisy conditions. We release code, presets, and evaluation scripts to enable transparent replication, comparison, and dataset annotation.
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Appendix
| Sweep stage | Best run ID | Matcher | Acc. | Prec. | ID-free Acc. | Med. Err. (px) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tier A (coarse) | tierA/run_008 | hybrid | 0.7289 | 0.8082 | 0.7787 | 1.416 |
| Tier B1 | b1_005 | sla | 0.7319 | 0.7956 | 0.7760 | 1.423 |
| Tier B2 (winner) | tierB/b2_081 | sla | 0.7414 | 0.8116 | 0.7740 | 1.414 |
| Tier B3 | tierB/b3_004 | sla | 0.7381 | 0.8042 | 0.7680 | 1.416 |
| Run ID | Ties | Acc. | Prec. | IDF | Med.Err. | FB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| tierB/b2_081 | 8 | 0.7414 | 0.8116 | 0.774 | 1.414 | 99,98,97 / 4 / 8 |
| tierB/b2_113 | 8 | 0.7364 | 0.8081 | 0.767 | 1.415 | 99.5,99,98.5,98 / 4 / 12 |
| tierB/b2_065 | 8 | 0.7346 | 0.8147 | 0.766 | 1.414 | 99,98,97 / 2 / 8 |
| Glint | Present | Pred. | Correct | Acc. | Prec. | Mean Err. (px) | Med. Err. (px) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| G0 | 1522 | 1485 | 1127 | 0.740 | 0.759 | 10.324 | 1.568 |
| G1 | 1845 | 1623 | 1382 | 0.749 | 0.852 | 8.060 | 1.350 |
| G2 | 1789 | 1576 | 1319 | 0.737 | 0.837 | 10.699 | 1.302 |
| G3 | 1737 | 1553 | 1256 | 0.723 | 0.809 | 11.003 | 1.407 |
| G4 | 1870 | 1768 | 1413 | 0.756 | 0.799 | 11.726 | 1.477 |
Eye Tracking
Eye tracking measures where people look and how their eyes move to study visual attention, behavior, and gaze-controlled systems.
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