International Journal of Electronics, Communication &

Instrumentation Engineering Research and

Development (IJECIERD)
ISSN 2249-684X
Vol. 3, Issue 4, Oct 2013, 81-88
© TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.

IRIS IMAGE SPECULAR QUALITY ARTIFACT EVALUATION FOR

BIOMETRIC RECOGNITION

KARAD SACHIN1, SANTOSH GHODAKE2, BHANUDAS YADAV3 & SHAKTIKUMAR SHILEDAR4

1
Assistant Professor, Instrumentation Engineering, Maharshi Parshuram College of Engineering, Velneshawar,
Maharashtra, India
2
Senior Lecturer,Electronics Engineering Department,Government Polytechnic,Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
3
Head of Department,Medical Electronics Government Polytechnic Nanded, India
4
Incharge, Head of Department,Electrical Engineering,Government Polytechnic,Mumbai, Maharashtra,India

ABSTRACT

Image quality assessment plays an important role in the performance of biometric systems. Data quality
assessment is a key issue, in order to broaden the applicability of iris biometrics to unconstrained imaging conditions.
Having empirically observed the published strategies to assess iris image quality; In this paper, we propose quality factor
after assessing the prominent factors of iris like Dilation, Light variation, Occlusion and Specular reflection by their scores.
Mainly Concentrating on Specular quality artifact. These factors once evaluated are then used to get quality score for a
given iris image from a database. As far as possible we have ensured that this paper will follow a common protocol in
deciding those features. Not only in finding the feature from one database but can be implemented and quality score can be
assessed for all possible freely available databases. Initial work has been carried out from the database created by our own
set up (HUWITZ HS 5000).The comparison is also done with existing databases and algorithm. This in turn will act as a
benchmark in increasing the efficiency of further processing.

KEYWORDS: Biometrics, Image Quality Assessment, Iris Image Quality, Iris Recognition, Quality Metrics

INTRODUCTION

Security and the authentication of individuals is necessary for many different areas of our lives, with most people
having to authenticate their identity on a daily basis; examples include ATMs, secure access to buildings, and international
travel. Biometric identification provides a valid alternative to traditional authentication mechanisms such as ID cards and
passwords, which overcoming many of the shortfalls of these methods; it is possible to identify an individual based
on ―who they are" rather than what they possess" or ―what they remember. Iris recognition is a particular type of
biometric system that can be used to reliably indentify a person by analyzing the patterns found in the iris. The iris is so
reliable as a form of identification because of the uniqueness of its pattern. Although there is a genetic influence,
particularly on the iris' colour, the iris develops through folding of the tissue membrane and then degeneration (to create
the pupil opening) which results in a random and unique iris. In comparison to other visual recognition techniques, the iris
has a great advantage in that there is huge variability of the pattern between individuals, meaning that large databases can
be searched without finding any false matches. This means that irises can be used to identify individuals rather than just
confirm their given identity; a property that would be useful in a situation such as border control, where it might be
important not to just show that an individual is not who they say they are but also to show exactly who they are. The
objective of this project is to produce a working prototype program that functions as an iris image quality assessment tool
82 Karad Sachin, Santosh Ghodake, Bhanudas Yadav & Shaktikumar Shiledar

using the algorithms described by Professors John Daugman and Hugo Proenca and also to implement this in an accurate
and useful way that is user-friendly.

IRIS IMAGE quality assessment plays an important role in automated biometric systems for two reasons: (i)
system performance and (ii) interoperability. Due to the effectiveness proven by the deployed iris recognition systems, the
popularity of the iris biometric trait has considerably grown in the last few years. Among these biometric methods, iris is
currently considered as one of the most reliable biometrics because of its unique textures random variation. Moreover, iris
is proved to be well protected from the external environment behind the cornea, relatively easy to acquire and stable all
over the person‘s life. For all of these reasons, iris patterns become interesting as an alternative approach to reliable visual
recognition of persons. Several reasons justify this interest:1) it is a naturally protected internal organ that is visible from
the exterior; 2) it has near circular and planar shape that more easily turns its segmentation and parameterization; and 3) its
texture has a predominantly randotypic chaotic appearance that is stable over a lifetime. Biometric methods, which identify
people based on physical or behavioral characteristics, are of interest because people cannot forget or lose their physical
characteristics in the way that they can lose passwords or identity cards. Previous work on iris image quality can be placed
into two categories: global and local analysis. Global image assessment is performed on the entire image and does not use
intrinsic Information specifically pertaining to the iris, while local analysis uses only information related to the iris, which
requires iris and/or pupil localization. Global analysis is typically faster than local analysis because it does not involve iris
localization. However, it is much more difficult, if not impossible, to get an accurate assessment of the iris through global
analysis because non iris regions such as the sclera, eyelids, eyelashes, and eyebrows negatively influence the assessment.
On the other hand, local assessment can provide a much more accurate analysis of the iris but only with correct
localization. To this end, careful consideration must be placed in the localization algorithms chosen for this type of
assessment. Iris recognition is a particular type of biometric system that can be used to reliably identify a person by
analyzing the patterns found in the iris. The iris is so reliable as a form of identification because of the uniqueness of its
pattern. Although there is a genetic influence, particularly on the iris' color, the iris develops through folding of the tissue
membrane and then degeneration (to create the pupil opening) which results in a random and unique iris.

Both enrollment and matching process include image acquisition, iris localization, iris normalization and feature
extraction. In enrollment process, extracted feature vector is stored in the database. During the matching, the extracted
feature is compared with stored features. Iris localization is the most important step in iris recognition system. The
performance of the iris recognition system depends on the precision of the localization step. The cost (execution time) of
localization is more than half of the recognition time, therefore, perfection of the localization as well as the time
complexity of the localization step are challenging issues in iris recognition system. Iris localization is one of the crucial
parts in an excellent iris recognition system, which should be able to cope with many bad circumstances such as blurred
outer boundary of iris, those light points in pupil and the effects caused by eyelids and eyelashes. The boundaries of iris
region can be approximated using two circles, one for the iris/sclera boundary and another, interior to the first, for the
iris/pupil boundary. The aim of iris location is to estimate the centre as well as radius of the two circles.

PROPOSED SCHEME

One of the open problems in biometrics that limits the applicability of iris biometrics is iris identification at-a-
distance and on-the move that must be done in unconstrained imaging conditions and using potentially large databases. To
broaden the usability of iris biometrics, additional analysis techniques must be developed, taking into account the
specificity of the degraded images, such as light reflections from the eye‘s surface, occlusions and fluctuations of
perspective and illumination. Most of these factors limit availability of distinctive features needed for proper recognition.
Iris Image Specular Quality Artifact Evaluation for Biometric Recognition 83

Thus, recently, significant effort has been focused on authenticating objects at-a-distance and on-the-move using the iris
biometrics on the basis of quality. The performance of Iris Recognition is affected by poor quality of iris images. Thus Iris
image quality assessment plays a major role which is based on analyzing the effect of quality factors in which primary
factors are defocus blur, motion blur, off-angle and secondary factors are Specular reflection, occlusion, lighting, pixel
count, Dilation Score, Lightning Variation. In this paper we propose quality factor after assessing the prominent factors of
iris like Dilation score, Light variation, Occlusion score and specular reflection score. These factors are evaluated from 15
databases using Proposed Algorithm. Initial work has been carried out from the database created by our own set up (COEP
Data Base). The comparison is also done with existing databases and algorithm.

Figure 1: Block Schematics for Lightning

Figure 2: Block Schematics of Specular Reflection

Figure 3: Block Schematics for Occlusion Score

84 Karad Sachin, Santosh Ghodake, Bhanudas Yadav & Shaktikumar Shiledar

Figure 4: Block Schematics for Dilation Score

IMPLEMENTATION
Dilation Measure
In addition to occlusion, the dilation of a pupil can affect the recognition accuracy. If the iris is too dilated, there
would not be enough information for recognition. In this paper, the dilation measure (D) is calculated by

(1)

Specular Reflection

Once eyelid occlusions are estimate occlusions resulting from Specular reflections are evaluated on the remaining
iris portion unaffected by the eyelids.

(2)

Occlusion Measure

The total amount of available iris pattern scan affects the recognition accuracy. Daugman used 50% as a
threshold. If the occlusion is more than 50%, then the iris image will be considered poor quality and is not used for
recognition. This is a hard threshold. In this paper, we developed the occlusion measure. The occlusion measure (O) is to
measure how much percentage of the iris area is invalid due to eyelids, eyelashes, and other noise.

(3)

Lighting Variation

After estimating occlusions from eyelids and specular reflection, the remaining unconcluded iris portion is split
into5 regions. A mean is calculated in each region (Xi)

(4)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this paper, we proposed the feature information approach for iris image-quality measure for iris recognition.
The quality score can be used to calculate the confidence level of the. The quality score can be used to calculate the
confidence level of the recognition result. Three public accessible databases are used in our experiment: 1) CASIA (v1, v2
s1, v2 s2, 3L, 3T, 3I); 2) UB Iris (800600s1, 800600 s2, 20 150, 200 1502, 200 150 R1, 200 150 R2); 3) MMU (1, 2); 4)
UPOL; 5) COEP. These databases cover a wide range of iris image types and allowed thorough testing of our method. We
analyzed four quality score Lightning Variation, Speular Reflection, Dilation Score and occlusions score component and
Iris Image Specular Quality Artifact Evaluation for Biometric Recognition 85

their distributions using these databases. Our analysis shows that the proposed quality measure is consistent with our
observations.

Specular Reflection Quality Score Analysis

Specular Reflection: Once eyelid occlusions are estimated, occlusions resulting from specular reflection are
evaluated on the remaining iris portion unaffected by the eyelids

(5)

We Calculated result on different 15 databases as mentioned above are as

Table 1: Specular Score Analysis

Database Minimum Maximum Average Standard Deviation
CAS 3I 0.0031 0.9989 0.8753 0.1235
CAS 3L 0.0016 0.9983 0.5753 0.2400
CAS 3T 0.0342 0.9542 0.5394 0.2303
CAS V1 0.0944 0.9960 0.7985 0.1396
CAS V2 S1 0.0044 0.9974 0.4338 0.2723
CAS V2 S2 0.0001 0.9987 0.3665 0.2705
UB 200 150 0.1531 0.8979 0.4571 0.1247
UB 200 1502 0.0081 0.9758 0.4173 0.2088
UB 200 150 R1 0.1936 0.9351 0.4859 0.1345
UB 200 150 R2 0.0052 0.9041 0.3565 0.2048
UB 800600 S1 0.1663 0.8510 0.4853 0.1461
UB 800600 S2 0.0057 0.8751 04074 0.1968
MMU DB 1 0.0706 0.9750 0.5029 0.1849
MMU DB 2 0.0009 0.9958 0.4454 0.2404
COEP DB 0.0197 0.3613 0.1552 0.0663

Table 2: Specular Score Interval

Database Low Medium High
CAS 3I 0~0.0031 0.9989 0.9989~1
CAS 3L 0~0.0016 0.9983 0.9983~1
CAS 3T 0~0.0342 0.9542 0.9542~1
CAS V1 0~0.0944 0.9960 0.9960~1
CAS V2 S1 0~0.0044 0.9974 0.9974~1
CAS V2 S2 0~0.0001 0.9987 0.9987~1
UB 200 150 0~0.1531 0.8979 0.8979~1
UB 200 1502 0~0.0081 0.9758 0.9758~1
UB 200 150 R1 0~0.1936 0.9351 0.9351~1
UB 200 150 R2 0~0.0052 0.9041 0.9041~1
UB 800600 S1 0~0.1663 0.8510 0.8510~1
UB 800600 S2 0~0.0057 0.8751 0.8751~1
MMU DB 1 0~0.0706 0.9750 0.9750~1
MMU DB 2 0~0.0009 0.9958 0.9958~1
COEP DB 0~0.0197 0.3613 0.3613~1
86 Karad Sachin, Santosh Ghodake, Bhanudas Yadav & Shaktikumar Shiledar

Figure 5: Histogram of Dilation Score

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE SCOPE

In this research, we proposed the Quality Estimation approach for iris image-quality measure for iris recognition.
The quality score can be used to calculate the confidence level of the recognition result. Sixteen public accessible
databases are used in our experiment: 1) CASIA (v1, v2 s1, v2 s2, 3L, 3T, 3I); 2) UB Iris (800600s1, 800600 s2, 20 150,
200 1502, 200 150 R1, 200 150 R2); 3) MMU (1, 2) ; 4) UPOL; 5) COEP . These databases cover a wide range of iris
image types and allowed thorough testing of our method. We analyzed four quality score Lightning Variation, Specular
Reflection, Dilation Score and occlusions score component and their distributions using these databases. The analysis
shows that the proposed quality measure is consistent with our observations. The main limitation of this approach is the
requirement of segmentation. Failed localization/segmentation will result in inaccurate quality scores. Therefore, as long as
the segmentation algorithm used for quality evaluation is as sophisticated as the one used in quality evaluation,
nevertheless, the need to deploy segmentation within the quality assessment algorithm makes this approach unsuitable for
real-time applications in which a quality factor would be used for the selection of the “best” frame from a sequence. Future
work includes perfecting the estimation techniques for the described quality factors, along with experimenting with the
new quality scores that incorporate correlation. Furthermore, the proposed framework is open for the inclusion of new iris
quality factors that will undoubtedly emerge through further research or through further relaxation of acquisition
constraints (e.g., distance, motion, and non uniform lighting).

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