Iris technology: A review on iris based biometric systems for unique human identification

Biometric features are widely used in real time applications for unique human identification. Iris is one of the physiological biometric features which are regarded as highly reliable in biometric identification systems. Often iris is combined with other biometric features for robust biometric systems. It is also observed that biometrics is combined with cryptography for stronger security mechanisms. Since iris is unique for all individuals across the globe, many researchers focused on using iris or along with other biometrics for security with great precision. Multimodal biometric systems came into existence for better accuracy in human authentication. However, iris is considered to be most discriminatory of facial biometrics. Study of iris based human identification in ideal and noncooperative environments can provide great insights which can help researchers and organizations that depend on iris-based biometric systems. The technical knowhow of iris strengths and weaknesses can be great advantage. This is more important in the wake of widespread use of smart devices which are vulnerable to attacks. This paper throws light into various iris-based biometric systems, issues with iris in the context of texture comparison, cancellable biometrics, iris in multi-model biometric systems, iris localization issues, challenging scenarios pertaining to accurate iris recognition and so on.