Gaze-based biometrics: An introduction to forensic applications

Eye tracking has for decades been a powerful tool of inspection for scientists and engineers. Thanks to the development of cheap and compact hardware devices, eye tracking applications are being adopted in many fields, from military to marketing. In recent years, gaze-based biometrics has proven to be a noteworthy alternative technology for authentication, surveillance and so on, although there are still efficiency and privacy issues to be addressed. An emerging application of gaze-based biometrics is in the forensic field. This paper provides an introduction and an extended bibliography to such applications, and briefly presents some relevant case studies about the so-called weapon focus effect, identification in a criminal lineup, and lie detection using eye tracking.