Your iris never lies

摘要

Iris images may soon be able to do more than just verify your identity - they may confirm your race and gender too. The iris controls the size of the pupil and gives a person's eyes their colour. It grows into a complex and unique pattern as a fetus develops and remains the same throughout a person's life. This fact has been successfully exploited in iris-based biometric systems, which work on the principle that each iris is completely different to any other. But that is not strictly true, as Kevin Bowyer at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana and his colleagues have found. They have developed a system that can pick out similarities between irises, instead of differences. Initial tests show it can distinguish between people of two different racial backgrounds and shows promise in determining gender.