Separating reflections in human iris images for illumination estimation

A method is presented for separating corneal reflections in an image of human irises to estimate illumination from the surrounding scene. Previous techniques for reflection separation have demonstrated success in only limited cases, such as for uniform colored lighting and simple object textures, so they are not applicable to irises which exhibit intricate textures and complicated reflections of the environment. To make this problem feasible, we present a method that capitalizes on physical characteristics of human irises to obtain an illumination estimate that encompasses the prominent light contributors in the scene. Results of this algorithm are presented for eyes of different colors, including light colored eyes for which reflection separation is necessary to determine a valid illumination estimate