SALTING SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CANCELABLE IRIS BIOMETRIC

• US 20100046808A1
• Filed: 08/22/2008
• Published: 02/25/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 08/22/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Connell, Jonathan H., Zuo, Jinyu, Ratha, Nalini K.
• Granted Patent: US 9,633,261 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/117
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/32 using biometric data, e.g. fingerprints, iris scans or voiceprints
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/193 Preprocessing; Feature extraction
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0866 involving user or device identifiers, e.g. serial number, physical or biometrical information, DNA, hand-signature or measurable physical characteristics

Abstract

A system and method for generating a cancelable biometric includes providing at least one pattern and combining the at least one pattern with a biometric image by employing a transform pixel operation to generate a transformed enrollment such that information about the transform pixel operation and the at least one pattern form a security key for protecting the biometric image. The biometric image is reused to generate another security key in the event that the security key is to be canceled.

Claims

1. A method for generating a cancelable biometric, comprising:

providing at least one pattern;

combining the at least one pattern with a biometric image by employing a transform pixel operation to generate a transformed enrollment such that information about the transform pixel operation and the at least one pattern form a security key for protecting the biometric image; and

if a new security key is needed, reusing the biometric image to generate the new security key to permit a previous security key to be cancelable.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the transform pixel operation includes applying at least one of a mathematical operation and a logical operation to combine pixels of the at least one pattern with the biometric image.

3. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the biometric image includes an iris image and the iris image includes one of a set of extracted features from the iris image.

4. The method as recited in claim 3, wherein the features extracted from the iris image include one of a set of binary-valued features and a set of real-valued features.

5. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising applying the at least one pattern and the transform pixel operation to a query to enable matching of a transformed query to the transformed enrollment to verify an identity.

6. The method as recited in claim 5, further comprising approving a transaction if a match exists between the transformed query and the transformed enrollment.

7. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein combining includes applying a logical operation to combine binary pixels of the at least one pattern with the biometric image.

8. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein providing at least one pattern includes providing at least one synthetic random image including at least one of a random noise pattern, a smoothed random noise pattern, and a synthetic iris-like pattern.

9. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein providing at least one pattern includes providing one of a random synthetic gray scale pattern, and a binary code or a real value code pattern.

10. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the at least one pattern and the transform pixel operation are protected such that if the transformed enrollment or a transformed query is obtained the biometric feature remains secure.

11. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising applying a rotational shift to the biometric image prior to combining to account for misalignment during a query.

12. A computer readable medium comprising a computer readable program for generating a cancelable biometric, wherein the computer readable program when executed on a computer causes the computer to perform the steps of:

providing at least one pattern;

combining the at least one pattern with a biometric image by employing a transform pixel operation to generate a transformed enrollment such that information about the transform pixel operation and the at least one pattern form a security key for protecting the biometric image; and

if a new security key is needed, reusing the biometric image to generate the new security key to permit a previous security key to be cancelable.

13. The computer readable medium as recited in claim 12, wherein the transform pixel operation includes applying at least one of a mathematical operation and a logical operation to combine pixels of the at least one pattern with the biometric image.

14. The computer readable medium as recited in claim 12, wherein the biometric image includes at least one of a set of extracted features from an iris image, a set of binary-valued features, a set of real-valued features, and a segmented iris image.

15. The computer readable medium as recited in claim 12, wherein providing at least one pattern includes providing at least one synthetic random image including at least one of a random noise pattern, a smoothed random noise pattern, and a synthetic iris-like pattern.

16. The computer readable medium as recited in claim 12, wherein providing at least one pattern includes providing one of a random synthetic gray scale pattern, and a binary code or a real value code pattern.

17. The computer readable medium as recited in claim 12, further comprising approving a transaction if a match exists between a transformed query and the transformed enrollment.

18. The computer readable medium as recited in claim 12, wherein the at least one pattern and the transform pixel operation are protected such that if the transformed enrollment or a transformed query is obtained the biometric feature remains secure.

19. A system for generating a cancelable biometric;

comprising;

a biometric image input device configured to collect a biometric image from a user;

at least one pattern selected from a plurality of patterns;

a combining module configured to combine pixels of the at least one pattern with the biometric image by employing a transform pixel operation to generate a transformed enrollment; and

a matcher configured to apply a transformed query transformed using the at least one pattern and the transform pixel operation to enable matching of the transformed query to the transformed enrollment to verify an identity of the user.

20. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein the transform pixel operation includes one of a mathematical operation and a logic operation to combine pixels of the at least one pattern with the biometric image.

21. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein the at least one pattern includes at least one of a synthetic image and a random image.

22. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein the at least one pattern includes one of a gray scale pattern and a binary code pattern.

23. The system as recited in claim 19, further comprising a server configured to receive the transformed enrollment and transformed queries, the server being coupled to a client device, the client device securely maintaining the at least one pattern and the transform pixel operation such that the transformed query is generated only by the client.

24. The system as recited in claim 23, wherein the at least one pattern and the transform pixel operation are protected at the client device such that if the transformed enrollment is obtained the biometric feature remains secure.

25. The system as recited in claim 19, wherein the biometric image include an iris image.