Patent ID: 7176973

Claim:
An iris camera module comprising: an image pickup optical system for picking up an image of the iris; a target optical system for displaying a target for the eye; and a target screen where the target is displayed, wherein the target optical system and the image pickup optical system are integrated into a single unit, and wherein the image pickup optical system includes: an infrared illuminating section for irradiating an infrared ray onto the eye, an image pickup section for picking up the image of the iris by detecting the infrared ray reflected on the eye, and an image pickup optical section for guiding the infrared ray reflected on the eye to the image pickup section; and wherein the target optical system includes a target optical section for guiding the image of the target on the target screen to the eye; and further wherein the image pickup section includes: an image pickup element for picking up the image of the iris, a storage for storing a reference iris information, and a comparator section for comparing an information based on the image of the iris picked up by the image pickup section with the reference iris information to output the comparison result as to whether matching is obtained; and wherein the reference iris information can be overwritten only a predetermined number of times in the storage.