Abstract
Due to current security situations around the globe, iris biometric technology is highly preferred for both overt and covert applications. A typical iris biometric system includes image acquisition, iris segmentation, features extraction, and matching and recognition modules. Amongst these modules, iris segmentation plays a decisive role because it segments the valid iris part in an input eyeimage. It includes two tasks: iris localization and noise (e.g., eyelids) removal. Notably, the overall performance of an iris biometric system strongly relies on the iris localization task, because it demarcates the actual iris contours. Some contemporary iris localization schemes search over a three-dimensional (3D) space while marking iris boundaries, which is a time-consuming process if not optimized properly. Besides, some schemes also resort to the fixed and/or crude thresholding-based techniques for pupil localization. Notably, such schemes may perform poorly if image data do not maintain quality. To address these issues, this study proposes a robust iris localization scheme maintaining both speed and accuracy. It includes preprocessing the input eyeimage using an order statistic-filter and the bilinear interpolation scheme, extracting an adaptive threshold using the image’s histogram, processing binary image via the morphological operators, extracting pupil’s center and radius based on the centroid and geometry concepts, marking iris outer boundary using the Circular Hough transform (CHT) and refining coarse iris boundaries through the Fourier series. The proposed scheme exhibits relatively better experimental results compared with some contemporary iris localization schemes on the public iris databases: IITD V1.0, CASIA-Iris-Interval and MMU V1.0.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Basit A, Javed MY (2007) Iris localization via intensity gradient and recognition through bit planes. In: Machine Vision, 2007 ICMV 2007 International Conference on: 28–29 Dec. 2007 2007; 23–28
Bowyer KW, Hollingsworth K, Flynn PJ (2008) Image understanding for iris biometrics: a survey. Comput Vis Image Underst 110(2):281–307
Bowyer K, Hollingsworth K, Flynn P (2012) A Survey of Iris Biometrics Research: 2008-2010. Handbook of Iris Recognition 2012
CASIA_Iris_Database: http://www.cbsr.ia.ac.cn/english/IrisDatabase.asp. Accessed 2 Aug 2020
Daugman JG (1993) High confidence visual recognition of persons by a test of statistical independence. Patt Analysis Mach Intell IEEE Trans 15(11):1148–1161
Daugman J (2007) New methods in Iris recognition. Syst Man Cybernet Part B: Cybernet IEEE Trans 37(5):1167–1175
Donida Labati R, Scotti F (2010) Noisy iris segmentation with boundary regularization and reflections removal. Image Vis Comput 28(2):270–277
Gonzalez RC, Woods RE (1992) Digital image processing, 2nd edition. Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference (April 30, 1992)
IITD_iris_databases: http://www.iitd.ac.in/. Accessed 2 Aug 2020
Jan F (2014) Development And Analysis of Robust Iris Segmentation Algorithms for Non Ideal Iris Recognition System. PhD Thesis COMSATS Univeristy Islamabad 2014
Jan F (2017) Segmentation and localization schemes for non-ideal iris biometric systems. Signal Process 133:192–212
Jan F (2018) Pupil localization in image data acquired with near-infrared or visible wavelength illumination. Multimed Tools Appl 77:1041–1067
Jan F, Usman I (2014) Iris segmentation for visible wavelength and near infrared eye images. Optik - Int J Light Electron Optics 125(16):4274–4282
Jan F, Usman I, Agha S (2012) Iris localization in frontal eye images for less constrained iris recognition systems. Digital Signal Process 22(6):971–986
Kapoor R, Gupta R, Son LH, Kumar R (2019) Iris localization for direction and deformation independence based on polynomial curve fitting and singleton expansion. Multimed Tools Appl 78(14):19279–19303
Khan TM, Aurangzeb Khan M, Malik SA, Khan SA, Bashir T, Dar AH (2011) Automatic localization of pupil using eccentricity and iris using gradient based method. Opt Lasers Eng 49(2):177–187
Ma L, Li H, Yu K (2020) Fast iris localization algorithm on noisy images based on conformal geometric algebra. Digital Signal Process 100:102682
Masek LKP (2003) Matlab source code for a biometric identification system based on iris pattern. In: The school of computer science and software engineering, the University of Western
Masek L (2003) Recognition of human iris patterns for biometric identification, in: BSc.Thesis, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, the University of Western Australia
Mehrotra H, Sa PK, Majhi B (2013) Fast segmentation and adaptive SURF descriptor for iris recognition. MathComput Model 58:132–146
MMU_Iris_Database: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~andyz/downloads/MMUIrisDatabase.zip. Accessed 2 Aug 2020
Nguyen K, Fookes C, Jillela R, Sridharan S, Ross A (2017) Long range iris recognition: a survey. Pattern Recogn 72:123–143
Ross A, Shah S (2006) Segmenting Non-Ideal Irises Using Geodesic Active Contours. In: Biometric Consortium Conference, 2006 Biometrics Symposium: Special Session on Research at the: Sept. 19 2006-Aug. 21 2006 2006; 1–6
Santos G, Proena H (2009) On the Role of Interpolation in the Normalization of Non-ideal Visible Wavelength Iris Images. In: Computational Intelligence and Security, 2009 CIS '09 International Conference on: 11–14 Dec. 2009 2009; 315–319
Sardar M, Mitra S, Shankar BU (2018) Iris localization using rough entropy and CSA: a soft computing approach. Appl Soft Comput 67:61–69
Shah S, Ross A (2009) Iris segmentation using geodesic active contours. Info Forensics Secur IEEE Trans 4(4):824–836
Soliman NF, Mohamed E, Magdi F, El-Samie FEA, Muhmmad A (2017) Efficient iris localization and recognition. Optik - Int J Light Electron Optics 140:469–475
Somnath Dey aDS (2007) A Novel Approach to Iris Localization for Iris Biometric Processing. Int J Biol Life Sci 3:3
Tan C-W, Kumar A (2011) Automated segmentation of iris images using visible wavelength face images. In: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW), 2011 IEEE Computer Society Conference on: 20–25 June 2011 2011; 9–14
Wan H-L, Li Z, Qiao J-P, Li B-S (2013) Non-ideal iris segmentation using anisotropic diffusion. IET Image Process 7:111–120
Wildes RP (1997) Iris recognition: an emerging biometric technology. Proc IEEE 85(9):1348–1363
Acknowledgments
Authors are thankful to the Malaysia Multimedia University (MMU), Department of Computer Science SOCIA Lab. Malaysia; the Biometrics Research Laboratory, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD), New Delhi, India; and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Automation (CASIA) for granting us free access to their relevant iris databases.
Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jan, F., Min-Allah, N., Agha, S. et al. A robust iris localization scheme for the iris recognition. Multimed Tools Appl 80, 4579–4605 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09814-5
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09814-5