Iris-Based Biometric Identification Using a Combination of the Right - Left Iris Statistical Features

Abstract

A combination between the information extracted for both right iris and left iris could increase the efficacy of the biometric recognition systems. In this paper, we propose a biometric identification method based on density of image patterns extracted from human iris images and the combination and comparison of the right iris and the left iris characteristics. The density of the patters approach for processed images can be a new biometric feature used to implement a biometric recognition system with high performance when a small feature dimension is used. In this way, we can maximize the retention of the effective biometric information. The experiments were conducted on the MMU Iris Database containing 225 images of the left eye and 225 images of the right eye. Two morphological Top-hat and Hit or Miss transforms were implemented to find out the particular pattern of pixels. They allow for the enhancement of detail in images. Then, a statistical feature extraction technique is employed to derive the density of the patterns in morphological transformed images. To assess the density of the patterns differences between the right and left iris data groups, the Pearson’s correlation coefficient (PCC) is computed. We reported very good results with a PCC of 0.6164 (strong and positive correlation) for Top-hat morphological operation whilst the Hit or Miss transform returns a PCC of 0.0127 so there is no relationship between the density of the patterns in the right and left irises.