Analysis of physical ageing effects in iris biometrics

Physical ageing is an important issue for practical biometrics, since it is known that the associated physiological changes can impair performance for most modalities. Understanding the effects of ageing is necessary, therefore both to optimise attainable performance but also to understand how to manage biometric templates, especially as the time elapsed between enrolment and use increases. Many factors can affect the performance of an iris recognition system, and in this study the authors report an experimental investigation of the interrelationship between some characteristics which are particularly relevant in understanding how to manage the practical effects of ageing with respect to this modality. Moreover, template ageing will itself be affected by issues related to the biological age of a subject, and this is also explored here.