Optimization of an adaptive nonlinear filter for the analysis of nystagmus.

An adaptive nonlinear digital filter has been designed for the analysis of an eye-movement signal called nystagmus. Nystagmus is a bi-phasic signal consisting of a sequence of tracking eye movements called "slow-phase" interspersed with brief, high-velocity refixation movements called "fast-phase." The objective of the analysis is to separate the nystagmus signal into its fast- and slow-phase components. Specifically, the goal is to produce an evenly sampled estimate of slow-phase velocity (SPV) and an estimate of the peak fast-phase velocity. Classically this has been done using pattern recognition methods that exploit the fact that the fast-phase is a relatively short duration, high-velocity movement compared to the slow-phase. Unfortunately, these velocity and duration differences do not reliably separate the slow- and fast-phases under all conditions, especially when the signal is noisy. We have designed and built an adaptive nonlinear digital filter that easily outperforms the more complex pattern recognition algorithms. This new filter, called an Adaptive Asymmetrically Trimmed-Mean (AATM) filter, works under the assumption that, on the average, the eyes spend more time in slow-phase than in fast-phase. Thus, in any given data segment, most of the data samples are slow-phase samples. By analyzing the amplitude distribution of the data samples in the segment we can determine which of these samples are slow-phase. We used computer generated nystagmus signals contaminated with 3 levels of noise to evaluate the filter. The filter parameters were then optimized using Monte Carlo procedures producing an extremely robust analysis method.