Biometric Optical Technology Retina Biometric

Biometric Optical Technology

Retina Biometric Technology Applications

This work reviews the "retina biometric technological application' in relation to the practical use of this application as well as the drawbacks, failures and successes that have been experienced with this technological security application. Biometric technology has been called the most precise biometric technology available today. This technology is under deployment at many airports across the globe to tighten security screening of airline employees and passengers. The product was patented in 18987 by Leonard Flom and Aran Safir for recognizing that the human irises have features that are unique to the point that the positive and accurate identification of individuals is possible and viable. In 1994 another patent was awarded to Dr. John Daugman who developed mathematical algorithms enabling image of the iris to be encoded and sorted digitally and then made the image compared to an iris image in real-time. This work explores the specifics of this application in the mapping of the iris for biometric recognition.

Retina Biometric Technology Applications

Objective

The objective of this work is to research and examine an application that uses retina biometric technology in security scanning and to detail the specific functions in this application.

I. Introduction

In the high-tech world of today security systems are all prevalent in both the public eye but as well in the view of the individual who seeks to protect their property and their family. The equipment utilized is stated to be "electronic. Optical and acoustic security, detection, monitoring and surveillance systems" (Market Research Report, Business Communications Co. 2002) Further all of this technological advances in security are used for the purpose of protecting" persons, organizations and companies, commercial and social operations, civil and military installations both at national and international levels....[ranging from] "the personalized security systems of a home to large-scale systems for the protection of crucial national installations." Inclusive in these systems are closed-circuit television cameras which comprise the omnipresent all-seeing eyes throughout the cities and in railway and subway stations. The constant recording and transmission of these hidden cameras informs law enforcement and security personnel of any impending threats.

Biometric Identification Technology Systems

Retina recognition and retinal pattern recognition has been used for many years. However the high costs of this type of Biometric identification resulted in the product being removed from the market. Recently the emergence of biometric technology systems has witnessed a climb in use rates for the purpose of identification all across the globe. Iris or Retinal scanning is done through high-resolution imaging using infrared and a specialized camera. The VRD or 'Virtual Retinal Display" through use of both horizontal and vertical scanning technology in the function of inputting small slices of picture superimposed on the retina in the scanning identification process. Biometric technology has been called the most precise biometric technology available today. This technology is under deployment at many airports across the globe to tighten security screening of airline employees and passengers. The product was patented in 1987 by Leonard Flom and Aran Safir for recognizing that the human irises have features that are unique to the point that the positive and accurate identification of individuals is possible and viable. In 1994 another patent was awarded to Dr. John Daugman who developed mathematical algorithms enabling image of the iris to be encoded and sorted digitally and then made the image compared to an iris image in real-time.

II. Biometric Technology - Superior to Other Applications

In the work entitled "Physical Security in Mission Critical Facilities" the author, Suzanne Niles, relates the fact that in methods of making identification of people fall into three primary categories "of increasing reliability - and increasing equipment costs:

1) What you have

2) What you know; and 3) Who you are. Niles states that the most reliable method of identification is "Who you are" which "refers to identification by recognition of unique physical characteristics."

III. Two Existing Failures in Biometric Recognition

There are two failures that exist in the application of Biometric Recognition. Those two failures are:

1) False rejection in which the system fails to recognize the individual who is legitimately a user creating great frustration for users denied access because of system failure in recognition of them.

2) False acceptance which is through confusion of one user and another or the acceptance of an invalid individual as being a user that is legitimate.

Although the rate of failure is easily adjusted through modifying the threshold through decreasing the rate of failure on the end of rejection or acceptance the increase of failure on the other end of the spectrum increases In the act of choosing equipment with biometric functions the considerations are stated to be:

1) Equipment cost and 2) Failure Rates.

Drawbacks to consumer embrasure of the retinal scanners are due to the requirement of the eye to be one to two inches away from the scanner while an LED is focused directly into the individual's eye.

IV. Specifics of the Biometric Technology Application

This type of technology is an application that through locating the iris with a monochrome camera approximately three feet from the eye. The narrowing of the algorithm moves from the right and left of the iris and then makes location of the outside edge while at the same time locating the pupil and the eye's inner edge. Visible and infrared light are used by the camera and the algorithm upon locating the iris utilized 20-D Gabor wavelets in a filtering and mapping function of the iris breaking it down into many separate phasors/vectors.

Values are assigned by the wavelets relating to the spatial frequency and orientation of those areas selected. The portion of the iris used is technologically converted into values of 512-byte IrisCode template. The iris has identification in 266 unique spots which serves as a template for live-scan images of iris comparisons.

One example of a product using this type of biometric capability is that of the Optical Biometric Reader with a template capacity of 720. Identification is through a one-to-many matching operation in which the captured image is compared to all images stored in the system until a match is located. False acceptance rates based on security settings of medium are sated to be 0.001% while false rejection rates are stated at 0.1%. There are nine security levels ranging from low to very high with acceptance rates depending on the level of security in use.