A new approach for iris localization in iris recognition systems

This paper presents a new approach for iris localization which consists of one of the most important steps in an iris recognition system. We have solved some of the most important drawbacks of the current methods using a pointwise level set algorithm, which detects the precise location of the iris by a stepwise deformation of an initial contour. Due to the special properties of our approach, there is no constraint about angles of head tilt. Furthermore, this algorithm is robust in noisy situations and can find irises which are partly occluded by eyelid and eyelashes. This is done by using a topology preserving technique in only one step to find both inner and outer boundaries. Another advantage of our method is its ability to find iris in images which include other parts of face. This pointwise level set approach makes it possible to perform the operations of the iris localization and mapping of iris coordinates to a polar dimension simultaneously, an approach which decreases the processing time of the system considerably. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the current methods both in terms of accuracy and response time.