Microscopic analysis using gaze-based interaction

Fraunhofer IOSB is currently constructing an automated microscopic laboratory. Different optical microscopes will be used to analyze specimen and gain new information out of the combination of the acquired sensor data. In order to narrow down specific patterns or tune the subsequent automated microscopy process, specimen have to be examined before the actual analysis process. To keep this step less time consuming and fatiguing, we designed an intuitive human-machine interface consisting of automated focusing algorithms and gaze-based interaction. The most important task in microscopy is focusing a desired region of a specimen. Considering microscopic analysis as a visual search task [1], this region of interest is exactly the region the operator is looking at. We use this information to automatically detect the focus plane in this region, by utilizing the microscope's z-axis, and present the operator a focused image. The user does not need to know how to operate the microscope in detail, but however is successful by using the encapsulated sophisticated operational sequences like initial, continuous focusing or synthetic image enhancements. This paper presents results of realizations for guided and fully automated microscopic analysis incorporating intuitive interaction and eased operation while gaining high quality results.