NIST Researchers Say Iris Recognition Technology Continues to Improve
Posted on April 18, 2012
A new report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) says identifying people by acquiring pictures of their eyes is becoming easier. NIST researchers evaluated 92 different iris recognition algorithms from nine private companies and two university labs. NIST says iris recognition technologies can produce very rapid results, although the speed often comes with reduced accuracy. Some advanced algorithms are capable of running through a database the size of the U.S. population in under ten seconds.
Patrick Grother, a scientist in NIST's Information Access Division, says, "If, for example, you are trying to pick out a fugitive who is trying to cross a national border, you need to know your software can identify that person from among millions of records. This ability to pick out a 'needle in a haystack' quickly and accurately is crucial, and we found some algorithms can search a haystack thousands of times larger than others. This is important because often there is no corresponding record, no needle to be found."
Accuracy varied substantially across the algorithms the NIST team tested. Success rates ranged between 90 and 99 percent among the algorithms, meaning that no software was perfect, and some produced as many as 10 times more errors than others. The tests also found that while some algorithms would be fast enough to run through a dataset equivalent to the size of the entire U.S. population in less than 10 seconds using a typical computer, there could be limitations to their accuracy. A related NIST report showed that accuracy could be improved if operators control image collection more tightly during acquisition, thereby obtaining better quality iris images.