Biometric key binding: Fuzzy vault based on iris images

Abstract

Recently, crypto-biometric systems have been studied for solving the key management problem of cryptographic systems and protecting templates in biometric systems at the same time. The fuzzy vault system is a well-known crypto-biometric system. We propose a new method of applying iris data to the fuzzy vault. Our research has following two advantages and contributions. First, in order to solve the variation problem of the extracted iris features, we introduce a pattern clustering method. Second, in order to produce unordered sets for fuzzy vault, we use the iris feature extraction algorithm based on ICA (Independent Component Analysis). Experimental results showed that 128-bit cryptographic keys as well as the iris templates were secure with the fuzzy vault scheme. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.