Iris segmentation: A review and research issues

Abstract

In recent years, due to the crime spreading and the potential of security threats, a lot of efforts have been spent to develop a reliable surveillance system. Biometric systems have grown in popularity as a trustworthy way to authenticate the identity of individuals. There are several biometrics to identify the persons such as Fingerprint, Face, Iris, Ear and Gait. The iris biometric is considered the best biometrics, due to its speed and accuracy in the identification, and distinctive features along the individual's lifetime. This paper focuses on issues of the iris segmentation research in the existing techniques. The techniques reported here can be categorized based on image acquisition environment into two scenarios: close-up imaging settings and non-cooperative imaging settings. The theorem behind each strategy is presented along with the outlines of implementation. A review of the issues in the iris segmentation methods coupled with comparison to the relevant issues is included. The weakness of each method is also obtained. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.