George W. Quinn

NIST

gw@nist.gov

Jan 26, 2015

Usefulness of Existing Iris Databases

and Future Priorities
 Iris recognition is extremely accurate when the quality of the images is good.

 The IREX III supplemental report found that of 1,013 searches that failed to 

return the correct mate (for any of the top 3 matching algorithms), in every 

case there was some problem with one of the images.

 Performance of an operational system will be determined by the poorest 

quality samples and how frequently they occur.

Current State of Iris Recognition
Available Iris Datasets

Notre Dame

 ND-IRIS-0405

 Cross Sensor

 Time Lapse

 Template Aging

 Contact Lenses

 Gender Prediction

 Face / Ocular Challenge

CASIA

 Iris-Thousand

 Iris-Interval

 Twins

 Long Range

 Synthetic Iris

 Iris-Lamp

University of Beira

 UBIRIS.v1

 UBIRIS.v1

Clarkson University

 Q-FIRE (face + iris)

 Liveness Detection

West Virginia University

 Multi-modal

 Off-Axis

 Synthetic Iris

UTIRIS

 Visible + Near-IR

BioSecure

 Desktop Dataset

SmartSensors

 IrisBase

MultiMedia University

 MMU1
Pupil Dilation

“[W]hen matching ... images of the same person, larger differences in 

pupil dilation yield higher template dissimilarities.”

- Hollingsworth, Bowyer, Flynn

Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 2009

Dilated Constricted
Pupil Dilation

Contact Lenses

Two types:

1) Vision correction lenses

2) Patterned contact lenses

Vision Correction Patterned Contact

spoofing?

Notre Dame has a dataset of iris images of people wearing contact lenses: 

http://www3.nd.edu/~cvrl/CVRL/Data_Sets.html
Iris Ageing

Iris Ageing

Irreversible changes to the healthy iris or neighboring anatomy that yield 

mated dissimilarity scores that increase monotonically with time-separation 

of the compared images.

- IREX VI
Iris Ageing*

Figure Source: “Analysis of Template Aging in Iris Biometrics.” Fenker and 

Bowyer, IEEE Computer Sciety Biometrics Workshop, 2012

* Fenker and Bowyer use a different definition of ‘template ageing’.
 IREX VI includes a comprehensive re-analysis of the Notre Dame iris collections.

 It also searched for an ageing effect in two other iris datasets:

• NEXUS (Canadian border crossing)

• OPS (Operational data from DoD)

 Conclusion: “[W]e find no evidence of a widespread iris ageing effect”

 The re-analysis of the Notre Dame data concluded that when you normalize for 

pupil dilation and eyelid occlusion, the apparent ageing effect goes away.

Decision Threshold Decision Threshold

Reject Rate

Iris Ageing

Without normalization With normalization
Irregular Pupils

The IREX III Failure Analysis Report determined that 45 of 1,013 failed searches 

probably failed due to abnormal pupil shapes.

Image Sources: medicalpicturesinfo.com, pbs.org

Coloboma Tadpole Pupil

Possible Medical Explanations:
Illumination

Differences in illumination can make non-flat surfaces appear different.

source: landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov
Illumination

 Most cameras illuminate from the front to restrict specular highlights 

within the pupil.

 Differences in illumination can still occur due to ambient lighting.

 Ambient lighting can also introduce Purkinji Images.
Illumination

NOTE: CASIA-Iris-Lamp 4.0 contains images where a lamp was turned on near the 

subject to ‘introduce more intra-class variations’, but the images do not contain 

noticeable Purkinji Images. 
Eye Colour

 Does the colour of the eye affect recognition accuracy?

 Lighter coloured eyes seem to have more pronounced features

(at least according to my own personal observation!)

Green Eye Brown Eye
Eye Colour

FPIR

(Enrolled Population Size = 1,600,000)

FNIR

0.01

0.02

0.05

0.1

0.0001 0.0002 0.0005 0.001 0.002 0.005 0.01 0.02 0.05 0.1 0.2

D02P, blue/green/grey

D02P, brown

G01P, blue/green/grey

G01P, brown

I02P, blue/green/grey

I02P, brown

Light eyes

Dark eyes
Iris as a Forensic

Source: National Geographic

Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey (film)

Forensic Science

“The application of scientific knowledge and methodology to legal problems and criminal 

investigations.”

- legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com

Webcam Image
Future Areas of Research

 Surgical alterations

 Neo-natal

 Ageing

 Iris at a distance

 Abnormal Pupils

 Purkinji Images

Also, larger sets of iris images wouldn’t hurt (i.e. with more subjects represented).
Datasets Referenced

University of Tehran (UTIRIS) – Visible and Near-IR iris captures.

https://utiris.wordpress.com/

Notre Dame (ND) – Iris Ageing, Contact Lenses (and more)

http://www3.nd.edu/~cvrl/CVRL/Data_Sets.html

CASIA-Iris-Lamp – Images with a side lamp turned on/off

http://biometrics.idealtest.org/
Thanks

George W. Quinn

http://iris.nist.gov/