Applying information theory and entropy to eliminate errors in mouse-tracking results

Abstract

Mouse-tracking of computer system users represents a less expensive, but also a far more applicable alternative to eye-tracking. The main disadvantage of mouse-tracking are errors manifested as discrepancies between the actual eye-gaze position and the mouse cursor position. This paper presents a method for automated correction of errors arising in mouse-tracking. Our approach draws upon information theory and employs Shannon entropy. The method is based on calculating the entropy of a visual representation of a Web page, i.e., we quantify information potential values of various positions. Information obtained, thereby, is paired with cumulative time intervals, spent by the mouse cursor in each position. In this way, we identify cursor positions that do not match eye-gaze positions. To verify the effectiveness of our method, we compared the eye gaze and mouse cursor heat maps in the following ways: We calculated the coefficient of correlation between the two; we computed Euclidean distance between their centers of gravity; and we performed visual comparison.