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Clinical Trial
. 2013 Jun 12;10(85):20130227.
doi: 10.1098/rsif.2013.0227. Print 2013 Aug 6.

High-speed camera characterization of voluntary eye blinking kinematics

Kyung-Ah Kwon  1 , Rebecca J Shipley, Mohan Edirisinghe, Daniel G Ezra, Geoff Rose, Serena M Best, Ruth E Cameron
Affiliations
Clinical Trial

High-speed camera characterization of voluntary eye blinking kinematics

Kyung-Ah Kwon et al. J R Soc Interface. .

Abstract

Blinking is vital to maintain the integrity of the ocular surface and its characteristics such as blink duration and speed can vary significantly, depending on the health of the eyes. The blink is so rapid that special techniques are required to characterize it. In this study, a high-speed camera was used to record and characterize voluntary blinking. The blinking motion of 25 healthy volunteers was recorded at 600 frames per second. Master curves for the palpebral aperture and blinking speed were constructed using palpebral aperture versus time data taken from the high-speed camera recordings, which show that one blink can be divided into four phases; closing, closed, early opening and late opening. Analysis of data from the high-speed camera images was used to calculate the palpebral aperture, peak blinking speed, average blinking speed and duration of voluntary blinking and compare it with data generated by other methods previously used to evaluate voluntary blinking. The advantages of the high-speed camera method over the others are discussed, thereby supporting the high potential usefulness of the method in clinical research.

Keywords: blink kinematics; blinking duration; blinking speed; high-speed camera; voluntary blink.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(a) Scatter plot of the normalized palpebral aperture for all 25 volunteers studied. (b) Key frame images illustrating each phase (these are also available on the electronic supplementary material, video). 1, 2, 3 and 4 refer to the closing phase, closed phase, early-opening phase, late-opening phase, respectively. (Online version in colour.)
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Master curve for (a) palpebral aperture and (b) blinking speed. (c) Box-plot of blinking duration for each phase and (d) box-plot of blinking speed for closing and opening phases. Each point on the curves represent mean ± s.d. and the diamond-shaped markers on the box-plots represent the mean values. (Online version in colour.)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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