Developer builds epilepsy screening tool, uncovers how sampling rate distorts flash detection

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A developer built a photosensitive epilepsy screening tool based on broadcast regulations introduced after a 1997 Pokémon episode triggered seizures in 685 Japanese children. The tool checks video content against Ofcom and ITU-R standards that limit flashes to no more than three per second. During testing, a clip alternating five times per second was incorrectly flagged as a violation due to aliasing — a measurement artifact caused by sampling at only 10 fps, which sits at the Nyquist boundary for that frequency. Rather than raising the baseline sampling rate across entire videos, the developer implemented adaptive resampling that re-examines only uncertain spans at higher frame rates, resolving borderline results accurately. The approach corrected both false positives and false negatives, demonstrating that sampling rate in this context affects result correctness, not just processing performance.

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