Automatic Classification of the Vestibulo-Ocular Reflex Nystagmus: Integration of Data Clustering and System Identification

The vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) plays an important role in our daily activities by enabling us to fixate on objects during head movements. Modeling and identification of the VOR improves our insight into the system behavior and improves diagnosis of various disorders. However, the switching nature of eye movements (nystagmus), including the VOR, makes dynamic analysis challenging. The first step in such analysis is to segment data into its subsystem responses (here slow and fast segment intervals). Misclassification of segments results in biased analysis of the system of interest. Here, we develop a novel three-step algorithm to classify the VOR data into slow and fast intervals automatically. The proposed algorithm is initialized using a K-means clustering method. The initial classification is then refined using system identification approaches and prediction error statistics. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated on simulated and experimental data. It is shown that the new algorithm performance is much improved over the previous methods, in terms of higher specificity.