BIOMETRICS

I.M.Muthu Kumar, K.Naveenkumar

Muthukumar.2006@rediffmail.com
nav.saran007@gmail.com
Kumaraguru College of Technology, India

Abstract— As the iris recognition technology produces very low false rate when compared to the other biometrics results it is very
preferable in many systems such as airports, banks, defense, etc.., where the security plays one of the major role. But in the case of
fields where the database is huge, the comparison time is very high.Thispaper deals with the basics of iris, its properties and how it
adds some advantageous features to recognize the correct person. In this paper we discuss the details regarding the information about
how the iris is located, to distinguish it from other parts of the eye, how the scanner scans the whole pattern of the iris while enrolling
and matching and how the scanned patterns are converted into 256 bytes of data so that it can be stored in the database. We
compare the iris codes of the current person who wants to access the database and gives the matched results to the user
accordingly.This paper includes the implementation of HAMMING-CUT-MATCHING algorithm which reduces the comparison time
for matching the iris code with database so that we can use iris recognition in case of huge databases like voting system.As we have
used hand geometry for verifying the identified person, it adds the security to the whole system. Finally this paper contains the
applications of the combined features of the recognition of iris and verification of hand geometry in airport

I. INTRODUCTION
The determination, measuring, and codification of the unique characteristic traits that each of us is born with is known as the
science of biometrics. Various forms of computer-based biometrics for personal authentication have been around for the past
twenty years, but not until recently have some reached maturity and a quality/reliability that has enabled their widespread
application. In the past, hand geometry enjoyed the advantage of very small templates (codes containing the biometric data), but
with modern computers this is no longer the main issue and iris based solutions are steadily gaining ground.
Retinal, iris, and fingerprint recognition are mature technologies with the most reliable performance. Of the three methods,
iris recognition is the least intrusive with greater accuracy.
In addition to reliable performance some of the other advantages of using biometrics are

1) High security: It is based on physical characteristics, which cannot be lost or stolen.

2) Certainty/accountability: A specific person, not just a holder of a token or somebody who knows a
PIN/password, has been authenticated. Users need not worry about someone using their token or PIN code without
their knowledge.
 3) Ease of administration: The problems of handling forgotten PIN/passwords and lost/stolen keys or access
cards are eliminated; the benefit is a lot of time and resources saved.

Fig 1 showing the process of the biometrics system

II. IDENFICATION USING IRIS RECOGNITION

Iris recognition is one of the biometric systems which utilize iris patterns as a method of gathering unique information about
an individual. It is considered to be one of the most reliable biometrics with some of the lowest false rejection and false
acceptance rates and so it is less intrusive.

1) IRIS: The iris, the colored portion of the eye, is approximately 11mm (.433 inches) in diameter and consists of several
layers and distinct features such as furrows, ridges, coronas, crypts, rings which controls the amount of light that enters
into the eye. Varying in shades of brown, blue and green, no two irises are alike, not even within the same individual or
identical twins.

Fig 2 Differentiating iris from the other parts of the eye

 2) PROPERTIES: Glasses and contact lenses, even colored ones, do not interfere with the process. In addition, recent
medical advances such as refractive surgery, cataract surgery and cornea transplants do not change the iris'
characteristics. In fact, it is impossible to modify the iris without risking blindness. And even a blind person can
participate. As long as a sightless eye has an iris, that eye can be identified by iris recognition.

3) FINDING IRIS IN AN IMAGE: An iris has a mesh-like texture to it, with numerous overlays and patterns that can
measure by the computer. The camera such as CCD having a high resolution can be set at a distance of four inches (10
centimeters) to 40 inches (one meter), depending on the scanning environment. When iris recognition is used for
logging on to a personal computer or checking in at an airport, people need to be somewhat closer to the camera. An
automatic cash machine, on the other hand, does not require such nearness.

Fig 3 showing an iris pattern imaged at a distance of 35cm

The iris-recognition software uses about 256 “degrees of freedom," or points of reference, to search the data for
a match. The iris is found by using an integrodifferential operator (1), which determines the inner and outer boundaries of the
iris's colored pigmentation. Not the entire iris is used: portions of the top, as well as 45˚ of the bottom, are unused using the
masking bits to account for eyelids and camera-light reflections as shown in figure 2.

4) ENCODING BY 2D WAVELET DEMODULTION: Each isolated iris pattern is then demodulated to extract its phase
information using quadrate 2D Gabor wavelets. It amounts to a patch-wise phase quantization of the iris pattern, by
identifying in which quadrant of the complex plane each resultant phasor lies when a given area of the iris is projected
onto complex-valued 2D Gabor wavelets. Such a phase quadrant coding sequences. A desirable feature of the phase
code is that it is a cyclic or grey code: in rotating between any adjacent phase quadrants, only a single bit changes,
unlike a binary code in which two bits may change, making some errors arbitrarily more costly than others. Altogether
2,048 such phase bits (256 bytes) are computed for each iris, but in a major improvement over the earlier algorithms,
now an equal number of masking bits are also computed to signify whether any iris region is obscured by eyelids,
contains any eyelash occlusions, specular reflections, boundary artifacts of hard contact lenses, or poor signal-to-noise
ratio and thus should be ignored in the demodulation code as artifact. Thus an iris pattern is converted into a sequence
of phasor bits which can be stored in the iris recognition software and then can compared for its identification.
 5) STORING AND COMPARING THE IMAGE: This record is then stored in a database for future comparison. When a
comparison is required the same process is followed but instead of storing the record it is compared to all the IrisCode
records stored in the database. The comparison also doesn’t actually compare the image of the iris but rather compares
the hexadecimal value produced after the algorithms have been applied.
6) Hamming Distance: In order to compare the stored IrisCode record with an image just scanned, a calculation of the
Hamming Distance is required. The Hamming Distance is a measure of the variation between the IrisCode record for
the current iris and the IrisCode records stored in the database. Each of the 2048 bits is compared against each other,
i.e. bit 1 from the current IrisCode and bit 1 from the stored IrisCode record are compared, then bit 2 and so on.

Fig.4 Showing the distribution of hamming distance

Any bits that don’t match are assigned a value of one and bits that do match a value of zero. Once all the bits have been
compared, the number of non-matching bits is divided by the total number of bits to produce a two-digit figure of how the two
IrisCode records differ. For example a Hamming Distance of 0.20 means that the two IrisCode differ by 20%.

False Reject Rate (FRR) occurs when the biometric measurement taken from the live subject fails to match the
template stored in the biometric system
False Accept Rate (FAR) occurs when the measurement taken from the live subject is so close to another
subject’s template that a correct match will be declared by mistake. The point at which the FRR and the FAR are equal is known
as the Crossover Error Rate (CER). The lower the CER, the more reliable and accurate the system. During recognition mode,
this comparison has to occur between the IrisCode record from the live subject and every IrisCode stored in the database before
the live subject is rejected.
The following table shows the probabilities of false accept and false reject with iris recognition technology:

Hamming False Accept False Reject

Distance Probability Probability
.28 1 in 1012 1 in 11,400
.29 1 in 1011 1 in 22,700
 .30 1 in 6.2 billion 1 in 46,000

.31 1 in 665 million 1 in 95,000

.32 1 in 81 million 1 in 201,000
.33 1 in 11 million 1 in 433,000
.34 1 in 1.7 million 1 in 950,000
.342 1 in 1.2 million 1 in 1.2 million
.35 1 in 295,000 1 in 2.12 million
.36 1 in 57,000 1 in 4.84 million
.37 1 in 12,300 1 in 11.3 million

Enrolment in an iris recognition system is normally quite fast. The actual capturing and testing of the image,
administrative requirements and training of the subject can usually be accomplished in a couple of minutes. Subjects who wear
glasses should remove their glasses during the initial enrolment in a recognition system to ensure that the best image is captured
without any reflection from the lenses in the glasses. Enrolment in an iris recognition system is normally quite fast.

The actual capturing and testing of the image, administrative requirements and training of the subject can usually be
accomplished in a couple of minutes. Subjects who wear glasses should remove their glasses during the initial enrolment in a
recognition system to ensure that the best image is captured without any reflection from the lenses in the glasses. Contact
lenses, on the other hand, do not need to be removed as they sit flush with the eye and hence have no reflections to impede the
initial scan. After the initial enrolment most users are able to go through subsequent scanning without any additional instruction
or assistance. Those who wear glasses no longer have to remove them after initial enrolment and wearing clear or colored
contact lenses pose no problems. Note that the same eye used during enrolment must be used during subsequent comparisons.
The comparison of a live subject IrisCode record with all the IrisCode records in the database may seem like a
large amount of data to process, in reality it normally only takes a few seconds. This comparison speed is obviously affected by
the speed of the system processor the database is running on and the size of the database itself.

The proximity a user needs to be to the scanning system is usually dependant on the lens in use and the
illumination. For example, systems scanning at the desktop PC level can operate with the subject seventeen to nineteen inches
from the unit.
Fig 5 Showing the iris scanner

7) ADVANTAGES OF IRIS RECOGNITION:

• As the morphogenesis of the iris that occurred during the month of seven remains stable throughout life it never
changes with the time.
• Uniqueness will be maintained between even the multi-birth children and so it is very difficult to forge.
• There will be no effect on our eyes since there is no direct contact.
• The accurateness of the scanning technology is great with error rates being very low.
• Scalability and speed is high when compared to other systems.

III. VERIFICATION USING HAND GEOMETRY :

This biometric approach uses the geometric form of the hand for confirming an individual’s identity. Because human hands are
not unique, specific features must be combined to assure dynamic verification.
The process of hand geometry includes scanning the features such as finger curves, thickness and length; height and
width of the back of the hand; the distance between the joints and overall bone structure.
To register in a hand-scan system a hand is placed on a reader’s covered flat surface. This placement is positioned by
five guides or pins that correctly situate the hand for the cameras. A succession of cameras captures 3-D pictures of the sides
and back of the hand. The attainment of the hand-scan is a fast and simple process. The hand-scan device can process the 3-D
images in 5 seconds or less and the hand verification usually takes less than 1 second.
The image capturing and verification software and hardware can easily be integrated within standalone units. Hand-
scan applications that include a large number of access points and users can be centrally administered, eliminating the need for
individuals to register on each device.
Fig 6 showing the hand scanner

After the iris recognition for the identification of the authorized person, the hand scanner scans the geometrical structure of the
hand and gets the data to compare with the template of the enrolled persons and verifies the identified person which increases
the security in our implementation.
IV. OUR IMPLEMENTATIONS
1) TO REDUCE THE COMPARISON TIME: The comparison speed of a person’s iris code with iris database is obviously
affected by the speed of the system processor and the size of the database itself. If the iris recognition technology is
used in large database system like identifying the citizenship of a person, then the time taken for comparing his iris
code with the database will be very high. So we have implemented hamming-cut-matching algorithm to reduce the
comparison time.
In normal process the iris code is compared with iris code in the database and the hamming distance is calculated by
comparing the whole 2048 bits. If the hamming distance is within some specified limit the person is given permission for access
otherwise it rejects the person’s identity. So, most of the time is spent for comparing the records in the database itself.
But we are comparing the iris codes bit by bit and simultaneously checking whether the hamming distance exceeds the
given limit or not. If it exceeds the limit, then comparison with the particular record is stopped and next record is taken for
comparison and so on. If both the iris code is going to be similar then it will proceed with same record by comparing the next
bits which reduces the comparison time because we are not comparing all the bits present in database.

The hamming-cut-matching-algorithm is as follows.

HAMMING-CUT-MATCHING ALGORITHM
START THE PROCESS
WHILE( FOR ALL RECORD IN DATABASE)
HAM=0, I=0, K=0
WHILE (I <= 2047)
READ A [I], D [K]
IF (A [I] < > D [K])
THEN
HAM  HAM + 1
IF (HAM = MAX) /*HAM is the hamming match
MAX is the maximum limit for hamming
Distance */
THEN
GOTO X;
ELSE
II+1
KK+1
ENDIF
ENDIF
ENDWHILE
 PRINT (“YOU ARE THE CORRECT PERSON”);
EXIT PROGRAM
X: TRANSFER THE CONTROL TO THE NEXT

DATABASE RECORD
ENDWHILE
PRINT(“YOU ARE NOT OUR AUTHORISED PERSON”);
STOP THE PROCESS
The comparison time for iris code matching is greatly reduced by our hamming-cut-matching algorithm.
We have IMPLEMENTED THIS HAMMING-CUT-MATCHING ALGORITHM IN A SIMPLE FORMAT IN C.

2) IMPLEMENTATION IN AIRPORT SECURITY: At an airport, for example, a person's name and airline
information accompanies the iris code, but to protect people's privacy no further data -- a Social Security number is
collected. The stored file is only 512 bytes with a resolution of 640 x 480, allowing for massive storage on a
computer's hard drive. The databases will not be shared with other organizations.
It is designed to allow only authorized people around the airport terminal in certain areas. But there is a chance
that an unauthorized person had time to dash in behind an authorized person once the iris-recognition allowed access -- a
practice it termed "piggybacking" or "tail-gating."
To avoid this problem we can have two doorways. The first door opens upon iris recognition and hand geometry
and then closes behind the person, leaving them in a small portal. The next door will only open upon confirming there is just
one person in the portal. Both the identification and verification can be implemented along with our added security in airport.

The figure given below shows the order of processes that are performed in the recognition of iris:

Fig 7 Showing the iris recognition in airport

V. CONCLUSION
Passwords, token cards and PIN are all risks to the security of an organization due to human nature. Our inability to
remember complex passwords and tendency to write these down along with losing token cards or forgetting PIN all contribute
to the possible breakdown in security for an organization.
The uniqueness of the iris and low probability of a false acceptance or false rejection all contribute to the benefits of
using iris recognition technology.
 It provides an accurate and secure method of authenticating users onto company systems, is a non-intrusive
method and has the speed required to minimize user frustration when accessing company systems.
As according to our implementation the comparison time of the iris code with the iris database is very much
less from the current system.
If a two-factor authentication system is implemented, iris recognition with a hand scanner for the verification,
then the strength of authentication increases and provides another part to "defense in depth" for the airport.