Eye Blinking Assessment of Bell’s Palsy Patient

Bell’s palsy is one the main causes of facial nerve paralysis and it is a condition in which the muscles on one side of the face become suddenly weak. The weakening causes the lower half of the face to droop. One-sided smile is common in Bell’s palsy cases and the affected eye refuses to close. This can cause the eye to become extremely dry and inflamed, often leading to exposure keratitis. By studying the differences of eyes blinking between normal and Bell’s palsy patient, the aim of this study is to design a computer-assisted diagnosis tool in evaluating of the facial nerve function. This study aims to extract the significant features by using the Viola-Jones algorithm. A combination of image processing methods with the Viola-Jones algorithm achieved the promising result where the developed tool is successfully detected the differences between the normal and Bell’s palsy patient during the eyes movement. Our proposed feature is quite robust in recognizing the Bell’s palsy by effectively used the image processing algorithms to detect and track the eye movements. This study provides the promising results which may contributes as a great aid tool to clinicians or medical professionals for an efficient facial nerve evaluation.