COMBINED FACE AND IRIS RECOGNITION SYSTEM

• US 20080075334A1
• Filed: 03/02/2007
• Published: 03/27/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/05/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Gentex Corporation
• Original Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Inventors: Determan, Gary, Bedros, Saad, Kilgore, George, Jacobson, Vincent, Hamza, Rida, Phinney, Thomas, Whillock, Rand, Jelinek, Jan, Ahrens, Terry
• Granted Patent: US 8,705,808 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/117
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/166 using acquisition arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/19 Sensors therefor

Abstract

A system using face and iris image capture for recognition of people. The system may have wide field-of-view, medium field-of-view and narrow field-of-view cameras to capture images of a scene of people, faces and irises for processing and recognition. Matching of the face and iris images with images of a database may be a basis for recognition and identification of a subject person.

Claims

1. A subject recognition system comprising:

a wide field-of-view camera;

a medium field of view camera;

a narrow field of view camera; and

a processing system connected to the wide field-of-view, medium field of view, and narrow field of view cameras.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a controller for driving a zoom of the narrow field of view camera.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein:

the wide field-of-view camera is for locating positions and ranges of subjects in an area;

the medium field of view camera is for capturing images of the subjects; and

the narrow field of view camera is for capturing images of iris features of the subjects.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein:

the subjects are people; and

the features are irises.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the medium field of view camera is for capturing images of faces of the people.

6. The system of claim 3, wherein the wide field of view camera is for estimating a distance between the cameras and the subjects.

7. The system of claim 3, wherein the distance to the subject may be inferred by stereo or from a calibrated camera and anthropometric knowledge.

8. The system of claim 3, wherein a correct zoom factor of the narrow field of view is estimated for capturing iris images.

9. The system of claim 5, wherein the processing system comprises a mechanism for storage and retrieval of images.

10. The system of claim 9 further comprising:

a mechanism for face and iris matching and/or enrolling connected to the processing system; and

an interface module connected to the mechanism for face and iris matching and/or enrolling and to the wide field of view camera, the medium field of view camera and the narrow field of view camera.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the interface module comprises an iris processor connected to the narrow field of view camera and to the mechanism for face and iris matching and/or enrolling.

12. The system of claim 10, further comprising an illumination system connected to the interface module.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the illuminator is an infrared iris illuminator.

14. A method of detecting and recognizing subject, comprising:

detecting one or more subjects in a scene;

acquiring face images of the one or more subjects;

acquiring iris images of the one or more subjects;

matching face images to stored faces in a database; and

matching iris images to iris images in a database.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein a level of recognition of a subject comprises a matching of a face image of the subject and a matching of an iris image of the subject with corresponding images, respectively, in a database.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising illuminating faces of the one or more subjects with infrared light for acquiring iris images.

17. The method of claim 14, further comprising prioritizing the subjects for recognition after detecting one or more subjects in a scene.

18. The method of claim 14, wherein:

the detecting the one or more subjects is in a wide field-of-view;

the acquiring the face images is in a medium field-of-view;

the acquiring the iris images is in a narrow field-of-view;

the detecting the one or more subjects in a wide field-of-view, acquiring face images in a medium field-of-view and acquiring iris images in a narrow field-of-view are achievable with two or less image sensors.

19. A combined biometrics recognition system comprising:

a camera;

a camera controller connected to the camera; and

a feature processor connected to the camera; and

wherein the camera has an adjustable field-of-view for acquiring one or more subjects in a scene and their features.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein:

the field-of-view of the camera is adjustable to a wide field-of-view for acquiring an image of the one or more subjects; and

the field-of-view of the camera is adjustable to a narrow field-of-view for acquiring an image of the at least one feature of a subject.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein:

the one or more subjects are persons; and

the at least one feature of a subject is a face and/or an iris.

22. The system of claim 21, further comprising a feature recognition processor connected to the camera controller.

23. The system of claim 22, further comprising:

a storage mechanism connected to the feature recognition processor; and

wherein the feature recognition processor is for matching images of features from the camera with images of features from the storage mechanism.

24. The system of claim 23, further comprising an infrared illumination system for illuminating features of images to be acquired by the camera.