An Efficient and Accurate Iris Segmentation Technique

Abstract

Accurate segmentation is a crucial phase in the implementation of an iris recognition system. In this paper we investigate a novel technique for iris segmentation. Morphological operations and area computation are applied together with other iris segmentation techniques in order to increase the speed and accuracy of the preprocessing phase. A rough approximation of the pupil’s location is first determined in the initial stage, followed by edge detection and circular Hough transform for accurate iris segmentation. The edge image used to localize the outer iris border is modified increasing the speed and accuracy of the process. Finally, we investigate the effect of eyelids detection using a parabolic curve fitting technique. Two data sets of eye images are used to evaluate the proposed techniques. Experimental results show that the proposed segmentation technique is efficient and performs well on both data sets of images.