Icomp: a Scanpath Comparison Tool

Visual inspection permeates the lives of all humans. Important criteria for evaluating the efficiency of human visual inspection include measurements of performance, as indicated by the inspector’s speed and accuracy. These performance metrics effectively summarize general outcomes of the process of (visual) inspection. In contrast, eye movements captured during visual inspection provide visualization of the inspector’s process, and therefore provide an instance of process metrics. Important eye movement related process measures include fixation durations, locations, and orderings. The utility of process metrics relies on their relation to, or explanation of performance. Previous eye tracking studies have relied solely on performance metrics to evaluate the differences in inspection strategies between experts and novices. We developed iComp, a visual tool that implements the unique feature of direct quantitative scanpath comparison (in loci and sequence), to provide a means for computation of an effective process measure for future expert/novice studies.