Retinal Scan

The blood vessel patterns of the retina and the pattern of flecks on the iris both offer unique methods of identification. These methods are presently used for high security access control at military and bank facilities. Retinal recognition is said to provide the most stable means of biometric identification over time. Orientation problems are minimized because the eye naturally aligns itself as it focuses on an illuminated target. However, comparisons of template records can take upwards of 10 seconds, depending on the size of your database. Initial enrollment requires 15 to 20 seconds per record.

Iris scanning does not require the person to interact with a device; a video image of the eye can be taken from one foot away. This has obvious benefits in applications like the one to positively identify prisoners described at the end of this section. The user's iris pattern is reflected back to the camera, which captures the unique pattern and stores it using less than 35 bytes of information. Like iris scanning, facial feature identification systems can capture images from a distance (several meters) using video equipment. As in other more complex systems, the challenge is achieving high levels of performance as the size of the database increases. The potential of these systems is generating much interest. Increased development efforts are needed in the areas of multimedia video technology and the complex software that facial identification requires.

Reprinted with permission from AIM, Inc.
www.aimglobal.org

Back to Index