Study and application of an eye tracking technique in dental aesthetics

Eye tracker is an instrument that can record the characteristics of eye movement when people process visual information. This instrument is important for basic psychological research. In the study of dental aesthetics, an eye tracker reflects the observer′s objective eye movement pattern and reveals the underlying aesthetic psychology. This paper summarizes the major research methods of dental aesthetics while focusing on eye-tracking studies in oral aesthetics. Eye tracking studies show that different population has different eye movement patterns when observing the same faces, while the same population can have different eye movement patterns when observing the faces of dental patients and normal people. This finding reveals that the personal characteristics and experience, the social environment and the featured facial structure of the observed individuals can influence eye movement patterns. This study also shows the factors that cause the aesthetic differences among different individuals and groups, as well as the psychological mechanisms.