Quantitative Study of Geological Target Spotting with the use of Eye Tracking

Abstract

In this paper we describe the use of eye tracking to quantitatively evaluate and analyse the variations in data interpretation performed by various geoscientists, measuring this against their ability to spot geological targets. We also describe an approach to evaluate the impact data preprocessing (i.e. enhancement) has on one's ability to perform the interpretation task. We adapted a mobile eye tracker to enable it to accurately map the point of gaze to the actual image coordinate instead of the forward facing eye tracker camera allowing the user to move their head as they view. Several visual interpretation tasks were performed by six geoscientists and the results are described in this paper.