An Enhanced Approach for Identification of Cosmetic Contact Lenses on Iris Recognition

Iris recognition is an automated method of biometric identification that uses mathematical pattern-recognition techniques on images of the irises of an individual’s eyes, whose complex random patterns are unique and can be seen from some distance. There are several variables that affect the performance of an Iris recognition system. One amongst these covariates are Contact Lenses. There are two types of contact lenses such as the Soft and the Textured lenses which affects the system. It is the contact lenses, especially the cosmetic lenses, which poses a challenge to these recognition systems as it confuses/complicates the natural iris patterns. This paper is trying to analyze in-depth, the effects of contact lenses on iris recognition by making use of the IIIT-D Iris Contact Lens and the ND-Contact Lens Databases, and introduce an improved technique to identify the use of contact lens.