SYSTEM FOR IRIS DETECTION, TRACKING AND RECOGNITION AT A DISTANCE

• US 20110187845A1
• Filed: 03/31/2011
• Published: 08/04/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/03/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Gentex Corporation
• Original Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Inventors: Bazakos, Michael E., Au, Kwong Wing, Kilgore, George A.
• Granted Patent: US 8,761,458 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/78
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/167 using comparisons between temporally consecutive images
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/18 Eye characteristics, e.g. of the iris
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/19 Sensors therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/193 Preprocessing; Feature extraction
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/197 Matching; Classification

Abstract

A stand-off range or at-a-distance iris detection and tracking for iris recognition having a head/face/eye locator, a zoom-in iris capture mechanism and an iris recognition module. The system may obtain iris information of a subject with or without his or her knowledge or cooperation. This information may be sufficient for identification of the subject, verification of identity and/or storage in a database.

Claims

1-23. -23. (canceled)

24. A method for iris detection at a distance of non-cooperative or cooperative subjects, comprising:

capturing an image of a face of a subject;

processing the image of the face of the subject to identify an eye region that contains at least one eye of the subject;

capturing an image of the identified eye region of the subject using an imaging device;

determining an iris orientation relative to the imaging device; and

re-acquiring an image of the eye region if it is determined that the iris orientation is not in a sufficiently desirable orientation towards the imaging device.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein the determining step includes processing the image of the identified eye region to determine if the iris of the subject is not in a sufficiently desirable orientation.

26. The method of claim 24, wherein the determining step includes processing the image of the face of the subject to determine if the face of the subject, and thus the iris, is not in a sufficiently desirable orientation.

27. The method of claim 24, wherein the determining step includes processing the image of the identified eye region to determine if the iris of the subject is not in a sufficiently desirable orientation.

28. The method of claim 24, wherein the determining step includes processing the image of the face to determine if the face of the subject is not in a sufficiently desirable orientation, and processing the image of the identified eye region to determine if the iris of the subject is not in a sufficiently desirable orientation.

29. The method of claim 24, wherein the image of the face is captured using a multi-band camera.

30. The method of claim 24, wherein the image of the identified eye region is captured using a zoom camera.

31. The method of claim 24, further comprising extracting features of an iris of the subject by determining inner and outer borders of the iris in the image of the identified eye region and doing a one dimensional segmentation of the iris in a polar domain.

32. The method of claim 31, further comprising converting the features of the iris into an iris numeric code.

33. The method of claim 32, further comprising comparing the iris numeric code with previously generated iris numeric codes for verification and identification of the iris numeric code or for entry of the iris numeric code into a database.

34. A method for iris detection at a distance of non-cooperative or cooperative subjects, comprising:

capturing an image of a face of a subject;

determining a face orientation relative to the imaging device;

re-acquiring an image of the face if it is determined that the face orientation is not in a sufficiently desirable orientation towards the imaging device; and

if the face orientation is in a sufficiently desirable orientation towards the imaging device, processing the image of the face of the subject to identify an eye region that contains at least one eye of the subject, and capturing an image of the identified eye region of the subject.

35. The method of claim 34, wherein the step of determining the face orientation of the subject relative to the imaging device includes extracting facial features of the face of the subject from the image of the face.

36. The method of claim 35, wherein at least one metric used to determine if the face orientation is not in a sufficiently desirable orientation towards the imaging device includes a face symmetry metric based on the extracted facial features.

37. The method of claim 35, wherein if an image of the face is re-acquired, the face orientation of the subject is again determined by extracting facial features of the face of the subject from the re-acquired image.

38. The method of claim 34, further comprising extracting features of an iris by determining inner and outer borders of the iris in the image of the identified eye region of the subject and doing a one dimensional segmentation of the iris in a polar domain.

39. The method of claim 38, further comprising converting the features of the iris into an iris numeric code.

40. The method of claim 39, further comprising comparing the iris numeric code with previously generated iris numeric codes for verification and identification of the iris numeric code or for entry of the iris numeric code into a database.

41. The method of claim 34, wherein the image of the face is captured using a multi-band camera.

42. The method of claim 34, wherein the image of the identified eye region is captured using a zoom camera.

43. A method for iris detection at a distance of non-cooperative or cooperative subjects, comprising:

capturing an image of a subject using an imaging device;

determining if an orientation of the subject is at a sufficiently desirable orientation towards the imaging device;

acquiring a new image of the subject if the orientation of the subject is determined not to be at a sufficiently desirable orientation towards the imaging device; and

once an image of the subject has been captured with the subject at a sufficiently desirable orientation towards the imaging device, extracting features of an iris of the subject.