Associate Professor and ABET Coordinator | Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Wetzel's research interests include eye tracking systems and eye movement analysis.
Email: pawetzel@vcu.edu
Areas of Expertise
Eye tracking systems and eye movement analysis, Effects of neurological diseases on eye movement control, Visual task analysis, Physiological instrumentation and signal processing systems, Human-machine interfaces based on based on eye and head movement
Education
University of Illinois
B.S. Engineering 1974
University of Illinois
M.S. Bioengineering 1979
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
S.M. Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering 1983
The researchers — including Baron, Paul Wetzel and George Gitchel, also of VCU — have been working on the eye-tracking device for about 14 years. Initially, it was just a research interest, but soon Baron, Wetzel and Gitchel — who was a graduate student at the time and has since stayed on with the university — saw it as something more...
Biomedical engineering professor Paul Wetzel, the interim director of VCU Parkinson’s and Movement Disorders Center Mark Baron and George Gitchel, assistant director at the Southeast/Richmond Veteran’s Affairs Parkinson’s Disease Research, Education and Clinical Center, began working together on the project...
The RightEye Parkinson’s and Other Movement Disorders Test was developed by a team which included Dr. Mark Baron, professor of neurology, interim director of the VCU Parkinson’s and Movement Disorders Center and deputy director of the Southeast/Richmond Veteran’s Affairs Parkinson’s Disease Research, Education and Clinical Center at the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center; Paul Wetzel, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the VCU School of Engineering and Dr. George Gitchel, associate director of research at the Southeast/Richmond PADRECC. This test was developed to accurately identify and assess patterns of eye movement that are affected in patients with movement disorders...
To describe the number and type of stimulation events and the relationship of stimulation to sedation level in patients receiving mechanical ventilation.
Objective measures to diagnose and to monitor improvement of symptoms following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) are lacking. Computerized eye tracking has been advocated as a rapid, user friendly, and field-ready technique to meet this need.
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) is the signature injury of the current Middle East conflicts, most commonly occurring as a result of Improvised Explosive Device blast. Accurately diagnosing mTBI-related symptoms in service members with concomitant combat stress, pain, anxiety, and depressive disorders is challenging. Objective assessment of eye-movements represents a novel, efficient, and accurate means of discriminating the diagnosis of mTBI.
