heyegiene

Website to help reduce bad screen usage habits and the resulting eye strain.

Computer Vision Syndrome

To do:

1. Stop detecting blinks when eye region is covered
   • Use Mediapipe to stop when face detection confidence score is below certain threshold
   • Store histogram of eyes during calibration period to determine if eyes are occluded (Bhattacharyya coefficient)
   • Use edge-based segmentation to detect abrupt break or unnatural edges
   • Feature matching techniques like SIFT and HOG with calibrated images
2. Stop blink alerts when camera is off
4. Improve the blink detection algorithm: try adaptive thresholding with rolling average

Dev notes

Possible limitations of web app:

• When the web tab loses focus, requestAnimationFrame may throttle or webcam access may pause depending on the browser

  • Solution: use desktop wrapper like Electron, Tauri, or Neutralino
  • Solution: make it a browser extension / web app hybrid
    • Limitation: different cross browser behavior

• Models used:

  • Mediapipe blendshape
  • Mediapipe facemesh

• Blink detection techniques:

  • BlinkCounterBlendshapes thresholds blink confidence scores from the blendshape model to count blinks
    • Problem: when head is tilted up, blendshapes model fails to detect blinks
    • Use of two thresholds to create deadband zone and handle hysteresis
  • BlinkCounterEAR calculates Eye Aspect Ratio (EAR) from the certain eye landmark points and then thresholds this area to detect blinks
    • Problem: baseline EAR is different for individuals and at different head tilts
      • Solutions to try: adaptive threshold - register blink if EAR drops below that person's baseline

• Alert trigger options

  • Trigger when time elapsed since last blink > threshold
    • Research shows 14-17 blinks per minute in general -> 15.5 on average -> blink every 3.9 seconds in general
    • Use minimum 14 blinks per minute -> blink every 4.2 seconds in general
      • Problem: can be annoying
    • Use long no-blink intervals (~8 seconds)
  • Trigger when blink rate < threshold
    • Calculate rolling blink rate and give general alert if prolonged for a certain period of time
  • Adaptive thresholding - measure baseline blink rate during first 2 minutes
    • Look into Blink Rate Threshold (BRT)

• Alert design options:

  • Peripheral UI pulse
  • Soft screen fade (reduce brightness)
  • Gentle audio cue
  • Model popups in extreme cases (very long no-blink periods or repeated violations)
  • Add cooldown (e.g., no alert for 30 seconds after correction).

• Features I like to have:

  • Dashboard
    • Average blink rate
    • Longest no-blink streak
    • Healthy digital eye score
  • 20-20-20 protocol timer
  • Viewing distance alerts
  • Prolonged lack of blinking alerts