Patent ID: 7436986

Claim:
A system for positively identifying a patient, comprising: an eye illumination source; a sensor configured to capture an image of the patient's eye containing an iris; an optical system for transferring the image to the sensor; means for analyzing the image; an information storage/retrieval component coupled to the analyzing means and having stored therein a plurality of historical Iris Feature Vectors (IFVs) representing identification indicia of a plurality of patients; wherein the analyzing means is adapted to generate from the image a contemporaneous IFV representing an identification indicia of the patient; wherein the analyzing means is suitably programmed for comparing the contemporaneous IFV to the plurality of stored, historical IFVs, and determining a similarity relationship between the contemporaneous IFV and the historical IFVs, and wherein the analyzing means is adapted to identify in the image an inner region and an outer region, an inner region anchor feature located on an outer border of the inner region, and an outer region anchor feature located on an outer border of the outer region, the contemporaneous IFV being located in an analysis space bounded by the outer border of the inner region, and the outer border of the outer region and a third border extending between the inner region anchor feature and the outer region anchor feature, wherein said anchor features are landmarks of the patient's eye. the outer border of the inner region being located at a pupil/iris boundary, and the outer border of the outer region being located at a limbus boundary.