Fake iris detection using structured light

Iris recognition has gained popularity due to factors such as its perceived high accuracy, significant usability advantages attributed to its non-contact acquisition method, and the availability of low cost sensors due to improvements in technology. However, non-contact biometrics authentication systems are vulnerable to different types of attacks than contact-type biometrics, such as fingerprints, for which there are a number of simple techniques to guard against attacks. In particular, the fashion industry has developed designer contact lenses with patterns that range from a simple change in eye color to the imposition of stars or other festive decorations. As these lenses are readily available and can be personalized at a very affordable price, their use in thwarting or spoofing iris-based authentication systems becomes plausible. Given the high security nature of many of these systems, there is a urgent need for a some countermeasure to this type of attack. In this paper, we describe a novel method to detect the presence of fake iris patterns, such as designer contact lenses, during the image acquisition stage to further enhance the basic security value of iris biometrics. Exploiting the anatomy and geometry of the human eye, we present a structured light projection method to detect the presence of artificial items obscuring the real iris. The detection principle has been verified using an inexpensive experimental setup consisting of a miniature projector and an offset camera. We also describe a novel algorithm to process the acquired images to find patterned contact lenses, and measure its performance using data collected with our apparatus. We argue that the addition of the proposed system and algorithm to existing iris biometrics based authentication systems will significantly improve their security.