Misclassifications of Contact Lens Iris PAD Algorithms: Is it Gender Bias or Environmental Conditions?

Abstract

One of the critical steps in biometrics pipeline is detection of presentation attacks, a physical adversary. Several presentation (adversary) attack detection (PAD) algorithms, including iris PAD, have been proposed and have shown superlative performance. However, a recent study, on a small-scale database, has highlighted that iris PAD may have gender biases. In this research, we present a rigorous study on gender bias in iris presentation attack detection algorithms using a large-scale and gender-balanced database. The paper provides several interesting observations which can help in building future presentation attack detection algorithms with aim of fair treatment of each demography. In addition, we also present a robust iris presentation attack detection algorithm by combining gender-covariate based classifiers. The proposed robust classifier not only reduces the difference in accuracy between different genders but also improves the overall performance of the PAD system.