Multispectral Iris Analysis : A Preliminary Study

This paper explores the possibility of using multispectral iris information to enhance the recognition performance of an iris biometric system. Commercial iris recognition systems typically sense the iridal reflection pertaining to the near-infrared (IR) range of the electromagnetic spectrum. This work examines the iris information represented in the visible and IR portion of the spectrum. It is hypothesized that, based on the color of the eye, different components of the iris are highlighted at multiple wavelengths. To this end, an acquisition procedure for obtaining co-registered multispectral iris images associated with the IR, Red, Green and Blue wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, is first discussed. The components of the iris that are revealed in multiple spectral channels/wavelengths based on the color of the eye are studied. An adaptive histogram equalization scheme is invoked to enhance the iris structure. The performance of iris recognition across multiple wavelengths is next evaluated. Experiments indicate the potential of using multispectral information to enhance the performance of iris recognition systems.