Robust Iris Recognition in Unconstrained Environments

Abstract

A biometric system provides automatic identification of an individual based on a unique feature or characteristic possessed by him/her. Iris recognition (IR) is known to be the most reliable and accurate biometric identification system. The iris recognition system (IRS) consists of an automatic segmentation mechanism which is based on the Hough transform (HT). This paper presents a robust IRS in unconstrained environments. Through this method, first a photo is taken from the iris, then edge detection is done, later on a contrast adjustment is persecuted in pre-processing stage. Circular HT is subsequently utilized for localizing circular area of iris inner and outer boundaries. The purpose of this last stage is to find circles in imperfect image inputs. Also, through applying parabolic HT, boundaries are localized between upper and lower eyelids. The proposed method, in comparison with available IRSs, not only enjoys higher accuracy, but also competes with them in terms of processing time. Experimental results on images available in UBIRIS, CASIA and MMUI database show that the proposed method has an accuracy rate of 99.12%, 98.80% and 98.34%, respectively.