Areas of Interest (AOIs)

The AOI Editor allows you to draw areas of interest (AOIs) on top of the reference image or surface. You can draw anything from simple polygons to multiple disconnected shapes. This tool is available for use after an Auto Image Mapper, a Reference Image Mapper, a Marker Mapper, or a Manual Mapper enrichment is completed.

Setup

AOI Editing and Drawing

Upon completion of the enrichment, access the main view of the enrichment by navigating to the Enrichments tab and selecting Edit next to Areas of Interest.

From there, you will enter the AOI editing view and you are ready to start drawing AOIs on your reference image or surface.

AOI Labels

AOIs can be associated with one or more labels. Labels provide a flexible way to classify AOIs and enable aggregation of gaze metrics across multiple AOI instances and across one or more enrichments within a project.

Right click the label to quickly access the label menu. Multi select AOIs with shift or ctrl (cmd for MacOS) and assign labels to multiple AOIs at once.

Labels exist in the Project scope. To manage Labels, right click an AOI and select ‘Manage Labels’ in the menu.

TIP

Would you like to automatically segment your areas of interest? Check out our Alpha-Lab tutorial.

AOI Heatmap and Metrics

To visualize your AOI heatmap:

• Navigate to the Visualizations tab.
• Click on Create Visualization.
• Select AOI heatmap and the enrichment to which it should be applied.

Within the AOI Heatmap view, users can specify the recordings to be included, the metric to be displayed, and which AOIs should be incorporated into the visualization. In the recording drop-down selector, you can view the fixation count for each recording. This provides a clearer understanding of exactly what data is contributing to the visualization.

Export Format

In the AOI Heatmap view and the Downloads view, you can download:

• The final visualization displaying the metric of your interest in .png format.

• aoi_fixations.csv: This file contains fixation events mapped on each area of interest.

Field	Description
label id	Unique identifier of the corresponding AOI label.
aoi label	Label of the corresponding AOI.
section id	Unique identifier of the corresponding section.
recording id	Unique identifier of the recording this sample belongs to.
fixation id	Identifier of fixation within the section. The counter starts at the beginning of the recording.
fixation duration [ms]	Duration of the fixation in milliseconds.

• aoi_metrics.csv: This file contains standard fixation metrics on AOIs.

Field	Description
label id	Unique identifier of the corresponding AOI label.
recording id	Unique identifier of the recording this sample belongs to.
recording name	Unique identifier of the corresponding AOI label.
aoi label	Label of the corresponding AOI.
average fixation duration [ms]	Average fixation duration for the corresponding area of interest in milliseconds.
total fixations	Total number of fixations for the corresponding area of interest in milliseconds.
time to first fixation [ms]	Average time in milliseconds until the corresponding area of interest gets fixated on for the first time in a recording.
total fixation duration [ms]	Total fixation duration for the corresponding area of interest in milliseconds.

Through the Downloads tab, you can download the AOI-related files as part of the enrichment folder. Note, that the following CSV files will be empty if no AOIs are defined for a specific enrichment.

aoi_fixations.csv

This file contains fixation events mapped on each area of interest.

Field	Description
label id	Unique identifier of the corresponding AOI label.
aoi label	Label of the corresponding AOI.
section id	Unique identifier of the corresponding section.
recording id	Unique identifier of the recording this sample belongs to.
fixation id	Identifier of fixation within the section. The counter starts at the beginning of the recording.
fixation duration [ms]	Duration of the fixation in milliseconds.

aoi_metrics.csv

This file contains standard fixation metrics on AOIs.

Field	Description
label id	Unique identifier of the corresponding AOI label.
recording id	Unique identifier of the recording this sample belongs to.
recording name	Name of the recording this sample belongs to.
aoi label	Label of the corresponding AOI.
average fixation duration [ms]	Average fixation duration for the corresponding area of interest in milliseconds.
total fixations	Total number of fixations for the corresponding area of interest in milliseconds.
time to first fixation [ms]	Average time in milliseconds until the corresponding area of interest gets fixated on for the first time in a recording.
total fixation duration [ms]	Total fixation duration for the corresponding area of interest in milliseconds.