ABSTRACT
Iris recognition provides real-time, high confidence identification of persons by mathematical analysis of the complex patterns that are visible within the iris of an eye from some distance. Because the iris is a protected, internal, organ whose random texture is epigenetic and stable throughout life, it can serve as a living password or passport. Recognition decisions are made with confidence levels high enough to support exhaustive searches through national databases.
The principle underlying the iris recognition algorithms is the failure of a test of statistical independence on the iris texture as encoded by multi-scale quadrature wavelets. This test of independence involving about 250 degrees-of-freedom is passed whenever different irises are compared, but it is failed when images of the same iris are compared. It is unnecessary for subjects to assert any identity which is then merely verified; rather, their identity is determined by searching databases of enrolled Iris Codes at a speed of about 100,000 persons per second. Data will be presented in this lecture from 9.1 million Iris Code comparisons and from independent test reports.
These algorithms are used now for passenger screening at several airports including Heathrow, Schiphol, JFK, and Dulles, and are being considered for National Identity Cards. Beyond applications for security and commerce, iris recognition could play a role in a wide range of settings in which persons' identities must be biometrically established by large-scale rapid database search.
John Daugman OBE is based at Cambridge University Computer Lab, where he teaches courses in Computer Vision, Neural Computing, Information Theory and Continuous Mathematics. He received his degrees at Harvard University in the USA, where he also subsequently became a member of the Faculty.
From 2002 he holds the Johann Bernoulli Chair in Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Groningen. His algorithms have won the 1997 Information Technology Award and Medal of the British Computer Society, the Technology Innovation Award of the US Smithsonian Museum, the "Millennium Product" Award of the UK Design Council, and the "Time 100" Innovators Award.