Assignment 2

Application of pattern recognition in

biomedical engineering
Iris Recognition
Lecturer

Dr. Liew Yih Miin

Group members:
Foo Yoke Yin

KEU 110010

Lai Eng Seong

KEU110012

Lee Kar Mun

KEU110013

Lim Su Yi

KEU110015

Vivian Koh Ci Ai

KEU110047

Yong Ching Wai

KEU110049

Table of Contents
1.0

Introduction ................................................................................................................... 2

2.0

Iris Recognition Implementation ................................................................................... 4

2.1

Combination of Support Vector Machine and Hamming Distance Approach .......... 4

2.1.1

Technical Implementation ................................................................................. 5

2.1.2

Results ............................................................................................................... 9

2.1.3

Discussion ........................................................................................................ 11

2.1.4

Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 11

2.2

Neighborhood-Binary Pattern (NBP) Approach ...................................................... 12

2.2.1

Technical Implementation ............................................................................... 12

2.2.3

Result ............................................................................................................... 17

2.2.4

Discussion ........................................................................................................ 17

2.2.4

Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 17

3.0

Overall Discussion........................................................................................................ 18

4.0

Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 20

5.0

Future Outlook ............................................................................................................ 20

6.0

Reference .................................................................................................................... 21

1.0

Introduction

With the advent of technology, biometrics authentication is made possible in

determining human identity. Biometrics authentication is a combination of using both
the computer system and human biometrics, the physical or behavioral traits such as
fingerprints, face, palm prints, hand geometry, iris and voice in identification. Among
the traits, iris has particularly gain the interest of mankind to use it as a recognition
system due to its rich texture which offers a strong biometric cue for recognizing
individuals (Ross, 2010).

Figure 1: The Anatomy of Eye

The iris is the color portion of the eye which located behind the cornea and in front of
the lens. It uses the pupillary dilator and sphincter muscles that govern the pupil size
to control the amount of light enters the eye. The details and pattern of the iris for
everyone is different due to the way it develops. During prenatal growth, iris develops
through a process of tight forming and folding of the tissue membrane. Prior to birth,
degeneration occurs causing the pupil to open along with the formation of the random
and unique patterns of the iris. Although the correlation and structure of the iris is
genetically linked, each individuals irises are unique and structurally distinct
(Westmoreland, Lemp & Snell, 1998).

Therefore, pattern recognition is one important stage in iris identification. Through

recognizing the patterns on the iris, one individual iris can be distinguished from one
another. It is impossible for man to recognize the pattern of human iris and identify
the owner from it. Pattern recognizing system can match observed iris patterns to
stored patterns, recognizing iris patters through its features and perform structural
analysis of features to identify their correlations. Hence, a pattern recognition system
plays a very important role to an extend such that, without this the development of iris
identification will halt.
The concept of using iris as a method in recognition is proposed by ophthalmologist
Frank Burch in 1936. Following in 1985, Drs. Leonard Flom and Aran Safir,
ophthalmologists, proposed the concept that no two irides are identical, and were
awarded a patent for the iris identification concept in 1987. Dr. Flom approached Dr.
John Daugman to develop an algorithm to automate identification of the human iris.
In 1993, a prototype unit had successfully completed by the Defense Nuclear Agency
with the help from Drs. Flom, Safir and Daugman. Dr. Daugman was then awarded a
patent for his automated iris recognition algorithms in 1994 and the first commercial
products become available in 1995. In 2005, the broad patent covering the basic
concept of iris recognition expired, providing marketing opportunities for other
parties to develop their own algorithms for iris recognition.
Iris recognition method have been intensively applied for identification purposes. For
example, India is using it for Unique ID program, The United Arab Emirates is using
for border control, so do airports in London Amsterdam and elsewhere to speed up the
process of identification. Nevertheless, there are still complex challenges faced when
special conditions appear, such as the wearing of contact lenses, artificial eyes,
accidental damaged on iris and all sorts of biological conditions related to the iris.
More development has to done to overcome these flaws (Burge & Bowyer, 2013).

2.0

Iris Recognition Implementation

2.1

Combination of Support Vector Machine and Hamming

Distance Approach
In the old time, only one method will be used for iris recognition. For example, the
frist algorithm for iris location was first proposed by Daugman in 1993. Then
researcher had found out that Hamming distance can be used for matching purpose
and an alternative segmentation method (Wildes, 1997) in which edge detection
operator and Hough transform were used. The upper and lower eyelids will be
explicitly modelled with a parabolic arcs. The method in recognizing iris is keep on
improving and researching by researchers. However, a combination of two
classification methods (Rai, 2014) were proposed. The zigzag collarette area of iris is
chosen as feature extraction due to its complex pattern (Roy & Bhattacharya, 2006).
Then parabola detection technique will be used to detect eyelid and eyelash will be
removed by using median filter. HAAR wavelet and 1D Log Gabor filter will be used
for feature extraction. Then support vector machine will be used as main classifier
followed by Hamming distance. By combining two methods of support vector
machine and Hamming distance approach, the accuracy on CASIA and Check iris
database can be increased if compared to single method.

2.1.1 Technical Implementation

Iris image capture

Segmented Zigzag
collarette area
Eyelid detection
Normalization
Feature Extraction
Enrolled
Database

Classification

Result

Step 1: Localization of iris boundary

Hough transform is a commonly used technique for identifying the parameters of
simple geometric objects, including lines and circles present in a given image. Hough
transform calculates the centre and radius coordinates of the iris region (Masek,
2003). The parametric equations for a circle with radius (r) and centre (x c, yc) are
stated as following:
x = xc + r cos

(1)

y = yc + r sin

(2)

The points (x, y) give the perimeter of a circle when angle

sweeps through the entire

360. The radius can be set as a constant so that the parametric representation of the
circle can be simplified. Edge detection technique can be applied before adopting
circular Hough Transform to find the circles in the given image.
Hough transform with all edge points (xi , yi) where i = 1, 2,... n can be written as
following:

Note: The highest coordinates (xc, yc, r) is selected as the coordinate of centre and
radius of the circle.
Step 2: Selection of zigzag collarette area
The selected zigzag collarette area provides important iris features as most complex
patterns of iris are captured in this area. Zigzag collarette area is unlikely affected by
eyelids and eyelashes due to its close position with the pupil.
Step 3: Eyelid detection
Upper and lower eyelids detection requires two search regions that are confined
within the zigzag collarette area of the iris and pupil. The width of search region can
be determined by following equation:
6

Width of search region = radius of iris radius of pupil

(5)

The edge image of an eye image can be determined using horizontal edge map due to
the presence of eye lids in upper and lower horizontal region. Eyelids detection is
done by adopting parabolic Hough transformation at each edge point within the search
Step 4: Normalization
Right after a successful segmentation, transforming the iris region will be done so that
it has fixed dimensions. Normalization process is done by using rubber sheet model
devised by (Daugman, 1993). After that, eyelash removal method will be used to
remove eyelashes and restore the underlying iris pattern as much as possible by
recreating Zigzag collarette area pixel that occluded by eyelashes. This can be done
by using the information from their non-occluded neighbors. We need to decide if
each of the pixel present in normalized image is occluded by eyelash. The equation
below can be used to determine the occlusion by eyelash.
If I(x,y) < T, pixel is occluded by eyelash.

(6)

where I is the intensity of a pixel, T is threshold.

If the pixel satisfies equation (6), then a 5 x 5 median filter will be applied on that
particular pixel. In 5 x 5 neighborhoods, only pixels that are greater than T will be
chosen as it is not occluded by eyelash. Lastly, all the pixels will be sorted in
ascending order and center pixel value will replace with median value of 5 x 5
window neighborhoods.
Step 5: Feature Extraction and Matching
The relevant texture information needs to be extracted after normalization has done.
Two methods to extract feature are proposed, ie Haar wavelet decomposition and 1D
Log Gabor wavelet. In the other hand, there are also two classifiers will be used
which are the support vector machine (SVM), as the main classifier, and Hamming
distance, as the second classifier. For data analysis in iris region in under multiresolution mode, wavelets have the advantage over the traditional Fourier transform
as the frequency data is localized in wavelet, allowing feature which occur at the same
position and resolution to be matched up. HAAR wavelet is applied to the normalized
image of 64 x 512 at three different levels successively for feature extraction. The

HAAR wavelet transform will be performed repeatedly in order to reduce information

sizes.
By convolving the normalized iris region with 1D Log-Gabor wavelet, the feature
encoding can be implemented. The 2D normalized iris region will first be broken into
a number of 1D signals and then these signals are convolved with 1D Gabor wavelets.
In order to prevent the influence of noise in output, the intensity values at known
noise area in the normalized pattern are set to the average intensity of surrounding
pixels. The encoding process will produce a noise mask along with bitwise template
which will be further used for classification purpose. Combined Support Vector
Machine and Hamming distance based classification approach is applied on each iris
image for matching purpose. 512 most important features of a given iris are extracted
using HAAR wavelet. The training and testing of SVM is done using the extracted
features. Hamming distance is applied for correct classification. If the classification is
done by SVM, n of SVM models will be developed for n classes present in the
training phase. When the training phase is finished, the given iris image will be tested
against all n SVM models for iris recognition. The evaluation of SVM performance is
determined using false acceptance rate (FAR) and false rejection rate (FRR). FAR is
defined as the probability of identifying an outsider as an enrolled user. On the other
hand, FRR is the probability of rejecting an enrolled user (wrongly recognizing
enrolled user as outsider).
Hamming distance is applied if the given iris is falsely rejected. 1D Log Gabor filter
is adopted to extract 2048 bit feature before applying Hamming distance for
classification. Hamming distance is calculated as mean difference between the given
iris and training templates for each class. For instance, if there are 5 training templates
in a particular class, then hamming distance S is calculated by following equation:
for class i = 1, 2, , n

Si =

User authenticity is determined by comparing the mean Hamming distance with a

threshold value.
True, if S <T
Authenticity =

False, otherwise
8

2.1.2 Results

Figure 2: Selection of zigzag collarette area

Figure 3: Eyelids detection

Figure 4: Normalization process

Figure 5: Eyelashes removal

Figure 6: Matching process

Table 1

Table 2

10

2.1.3 Discussion
There are several reasons of applying two different techniques for feature extraction
and classification. The reasons are as following:
1. Information about the noise mask could not be obtained by Haar decomposed
feature vector. This information plays a significant role in Hamming distance
classification. Thus, Haar is not suitable for Hamming distance classifier but
SVM classification.
2. The feature vector obtained by using 1D Gabor wavelet is suitable for
Hamming distance but not for SVM.
3. According to extensive testing of different networks, combination of SVM and
Hamming distance approach will give a better recognition accuracy than using
a single method. As SVM alone has relatively high false rejection rate,
Hamming distance is added to further overcome this problem, resulting in
higher recognition rate.
Based on the Table which demonstrate the accuracy comparison between the
proposed method and previous reported approaches, combined SVM and Hamming
distance method achieved 99.91% of accuracy, which ranks the highest among all the
approaches.

2.1.4 Conclusion
An efficient approach for iris feature extraction and recognition can be done by using
the method as discussed above. Zigzag collarette area of iris is chosen for the feature
extraction due to its ability to capture the most significant area from the complex
pattern of iris and hence a higher recognition rate can be achieved. HAAR wavelet
and 1D Log Gabor filter are used to extract feature which will then being used in iris
identification using the combined support vector machine and Hamming distance
approach. Parabola detection and trimmed median filter are also been used to detect
eyelid and eyelash. Comparisons among previous reported approaches and the one
currently proposed were made. It indicates that the recognition accuracy is higher
when using combination of SVM and Hamming distance if compared to either SVM
or Hamming distance. Accuracy in terms of FAR and FRR for this method is

11

exceedingly high for the CASIA database. In short, this proposed approach not only
efficient in case of identification but also verification.

2.2

Neighborhood-Binary Pattern (NBP) Approach

A novel new feature extraction method known as Neighborhood-Binary Pattern

(NBP) is being proposed (Hamouchene & Aouat, 2014). This method is inspired by
Local Binary Pattern (LBP) method as NBP method are able to capture local
information and in the same time iris texture can be describe better.

2.2.1 Technical Implementation

There are few steps in iris recognition systems. The steps are image acquisition,
iris preprocessing, feature extraction and also the matching steps as shown in figure
below (Hamouchene & Aouat, 2014).

Image Acquisition
To obtain image from a person
To using sensor
Preprocessing
To remove useless information from iris image
To extract the region of interest (iris)
To include segmentation (isolate iris ring) and normalization (provide
inavariant iris area, form ROI into rectangular region)*
Feature Extraction
There are two approaches:
Local Binary Pattern (LBP)
Neighborhood Binary Pattern (NBP)
Matching step
distasnce measure between generated iris code and stored iris code are being
calculated**

12

Note

*Due to the two ring of the iris are not co-centric, Integro-differential
operator by Daugman is being used to detect the inner and outer boundaries
(Daugman, 2004).
**Daugman using Hamming distance and threshold around 0.34

Figure 7: Typical process of iris recognition

Figure 8: Conversion of iris image to iris code

LBP method which proposed by Ojala and Pietikainen is using analysis window
with the size of 3x3. This method is basically comparing each neighborhood pixels
with values of the central pixel and following conditions are given where if
neighborhood pixel value is above or equal to central pixel value, then it is encoded
with value of 1, otherwise the neighborhood pixel value is encoded with 0. After
being threshold by the central pixel values, a binary code can be obtained and this
binary code will be converted to decimal number.
Feature Extraction by using Local Binary Pattern (LBP)
The aim of LBP is to extract iris feature out from the normalized iris images.
The output from LBP is feature vectors with n x n dimension that serves as input for
LVQ classifier.

13

Summary of LBP computation:

A sub-image with 3x3 matrix is formed.

Every neighboring pixel is compared with the central pixel. If the neighbor pixel is
greater than the central pixel, then it is recorded as 1. If the neighbor pixel is less than the
central pixel, then it is recorded as 0.

The weight pixels are matched with the threshold. If the threshold 1 is matched with the
weight pixel, then the pixel will be the weight pixel. If the threshold 0 is matched with the
weight, then 0 is displayed. The new set of data formed is the LBP data.

The pixel values in the LBP is summed and the central pixel is replaced with this
weighted sum value.

Figure 9: Computation of LBP

There is another feature that can be computed by using LBP method. It is known as C
contrast. C contrast is computed as the difference of average pixel of threshold equal
to 1 and the average pixel of threshold equal to 0.

Figure 10: C-contrast computation method

14

Feature Extraction by using Neighborhood Binary Pattern (NBP)

For NBP method, the neighborhood pixel values are being threshold as in LBP
but the difference is NBP method is comparing the neighborhood pixel values with
their respective next neighbor instead of central pixel values. The conditions are about
the same where a value of 1 is given if its gray value (neighborhood pixel value) is
greater

than

the

next

neighbor

otherwise

value

of

is

given.

Figure 11: Extraction of NBP pattern

By picking one the pixel value in the 3x3 analysis window (except for central
pixel value), the value is start comparing with adjacent values to determine 0 or 1.
The binary code is further converted to decimal value. If a small rotation happened to
the analysis window, different NBP code (binary code) will be obtained.
In order to prevent the rotation problem, an encoding process is being proposed.
This encoding process with pick the largest neighborhood pixel value and start
compare it with adjacent neighborhood pixel value. This encoding process can result
in the same binary code even though rotation on the analysis is happened.

Figure 12: Rotation invariant for NBP method.

A way to describe the NBP image is by using decomposing architecture. This
method will firstly divide the image into several blocks where mean value for each
block is being calculated and its variations will be encoded. Same as the condition
used in NBP, if value of one block is bigger than its neighbor block, a value of 1 will
15

be given and 0 otherwise. Therefore, we will obtain a binary matrix of the variation
means and we can use it as the template of the iris texture.

Figure 13: Process of encoding mean variation

Intersection method is being used for the matching purpose by comparing the iris
images. Similarity distances between the two extracted matrices are being calculated
by performing below equation:

As show in the above equation, M1 and M2 are the variation binary codes for the
iris images. S value for the ith block is equal to 1 if the value of M1 for ith block is
equal to the value of M2 for ith block. Nb is representing the total number of blocks
and this value is based on the degree of decomposition of the iris image. If value of
Dis is above certain threshold, the two iris images (1 and 2) are referred as same
person.
Public iris database, CASIA is being used to evaluate the performance of the
system. As suggest by (Hamouchene & Aouat, 2014), three images from each person
are taken as reference and 80 images will be used as test images where each image are
referred as query. For each of the image, LBP histogram and mean variation of the
NBP image are being extracted. Between the querys feature and extracted features,
hamming distance is being calculated. By sorting the hamming distance from most
similar to less similar, the top three is being considered and the query iris is classified
by referring the majority (highest similarity).

16

Figure 14: Recognition process flow

2.2.3 Result

Figure 15: Recognition rate for LBP and NBP method for each person
2.2.4 Discussion
From the above graph (figure 15), we can see that NBP method is way better than
the LBP method as the LBPs global rate is only 58.75% where NBPs rate is 76.25%.
This is because of NBP method is comparing the neighborhood pixel values with its
adjacent pixel values instead of being threshold by the central pixel values. In other
words, we can say there is relationship among the neighborhood pixel values for NBP
method. This result had shown the robustness and efficiency of the NBP method as
compared with LBP method.

2.2.4 Conclusion
We can conclude that NBP method is having good performance as compared with
LBP. This is because of there is relative connection between the neighborhood pixels
as each one of them is being thresholded by the adjacent neighbor and encoded. Not
17

only that, NBP image is being decomposed into number of blocks where their
variation of mean values are being extracted and encoded. This will result the binary
matrix being used as the feature descriptor for the iris image.

3.0

Overall Discussion

There are many approaches for the iris recognition. However, a classical iris
recognition system involved the series common steps which are the image acquisition,
iris preprocessing, feature extraction and matching step. For the preprocessing stage,
it involves the segmentation, filter and normalization.
From the above two methods for the iris recognition, they go through the common
series steps but each method is using different approach for the feature extraction and
matching step. The table below showed the summary for comparison between the
methods.
Table 3: The comparison between method 1 and method 2 for the iris recognition

Iris Recognition Method

Method 1

Method 2

Combination of m and Hamming

Neighborhood-Binary Pattern (NBP)

Distance Approach

Approach

Segmentation

Segmentation

Zig-Zag Collarette

Iris region

(The irregular jagged line

between regions of pupillary zone
and ciliary zone in the surface of
iris )
Feature Extraction
a. Haar wavelet decomposition

Feature Extraction
a.

Neighborhood Binary Pattern (NBP)

b. 1D Log Gabor wavelet.

18

Matching

Matching

a. Support Vector Machine

b. Hamming Distance
Advantage
-

The segmentation region is more

a. Hamming Distance

Advantage
-

Rotational invariance

specific on the region of Zig-Zag

Collarette where it captures the
most important areas of iris
-

There are two classifiers which

Disadvantage
-

With Hamming distance classifier

alone, the accuracy is not robust.

increase the robustness of the iris

recognition.
-

Low false acceptance ratio

High false rejection ratio

Disadvantage
-

The data will be affected by the

rotation of the iris.

From the two methods above, they applied the pattern recognition approaches in
different way to identify the iris pattern. Feature extraction is considered as the most
importance stage for the pattern recognition because it extracts the relatively most
significant information from a given data, in this case is the iris pattern. Method 1
extracts the feature information through the wavelet. Wavelet is a useful tool with rich
mathematical contents and great applications. One of its applications is the image
analysis for pattern recognition. It is a function that is isolated with respect to time
and frequency, while the Fourier transform only respect to the frequency information.
In method 1, one of the wavelet transform used is the efficiently computable Haar
wavelet transform. The iris image is mapped from the space of pixel to that of Haar
wavelet feature that contains rich description of the pattern. On the other hand,
method 2 applies the Neighborhood-Binary Pattern (NBP) in the feature extraction.

19

Generally, NBP is based on the Local Binary Pattern (LBP) which is an effective
texture operator which labels the pixel of an image by thresholding the neighborhood
of each pixel and considers the result as binary number. Thus, two different
approaches in the feature extract may result in different results for the recognition
rate, each approach with its own strength and weakness as shown in the table 3.
After the feature extraction, classifier is applied to classify or identify the iris pattern
for the identification. The method 1 uses extra one classifier known as Support Vector
Machine which is a supervised learning models work with an associated algorithm in
the pattern recognition. With the additional classifier, the error occurred is reduced
compare to method 2.
The results from both methods showed that method 1 is more stable and robust which
was around 99.91% of the average recognition rate, whereas LBP was 58.75% and
NBPs rate was 76.25%. However, it does not mean the method is better because
those methods are carried out in the different designed experiments.

4.0

Conclusion

In conclusion, the approach toward for iris recognition is different for both methods
and each approach with its own advantage and disadvantage respectively. However,
researches can be carried out for novel iris recognition with the combination of both
methods. Wavelet transform is used to decompose a given image to different kinds of
images and then processed with local difference between image pixel and its
neighborhood to build the LBP or NBP. The combination may increase the robustness
for the iris recognition.

5.0

Future Outlook

The future works involve are resolving challenges faced in developing an ultimately
high accuracy and reliable iris recognition system. Besides than solving the issues
caused by special iris condition as mentioned in introduction, noise that caused by
environments factors such as unfavourable lighting, large stand-off distances and
moving objects (Ross, 2010). These conditions can caused nonideal irides images to
20

be captured and increase the difficulties in processing. Robust image restoration

schemes are needed to enhance the quality of such iris images. In the intervening
time, researchers might develop a robust ocular multi-biometrics system by
combining the iris with facial biometrics. A more accurate and improved matching
identification can be done compare to only using low resolution iris image.
Apart from that, the hardware architecture of the system has to be improved to
complement with the increasingly complex algorithm which is used to enhance the
reliability and functionality of current used solutions (Grabowski & Andrzej, 2011).
The uses of iris identification system in large scale has raised the concerns about the
iris template security and the retention of owners privacy. A centralised databased
which stored millions of iris template and data must be secure with extra security to
prevent thief and also backup system to avoid data lost. This security system needed
to be updated and monitor frequently as the digital thief will also improves their
techniques from time to time.

6.0

Reference

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(NLPR), Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), 2006
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Daugman, J. G. (1993). High confidence visual recognition of persons by a test of
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L.

(2003). Recognition

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iris

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Ross, A. (2010). Iris recognition: The path forward. Computer, 43(2), 30-35.
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