Soft Lens Detection in Iris Image using Lens Boundary Analysis and Pattern Recognition Approach

Recent studies have demonstrated that the soft lens wearing during iris recognition has indicated the increase of false reject rate. It denies the strong belief that the soft lens wearing will cause no performance degradation. Therefore, it is a necessity for an iris recognition system to be able to detect the presence of soft lens prior to iris recognition. As a first step towards soft lens detection, this study proposed a method for segmenting the soft lens boundary in iris images. However, segmenting the soft lens boundary is a very challenging task due to its marginal contrast. Besides, the flash lighting effect during the iris image enrolment has caused the image to suffer from inconsistent illumination. In addition, the visibility condition of the soft lens boundary may be discerned as a bright or dark ridge as a result of the flash lighting. Three image enhancement techniques were therefore proposed in order to enhance the contrast of the soft lens boundary and to provide an even distribution of intensities across the image. A method called summed-histogram has been incorporated as a solution to classify the visibility condition of the soft lens boundary automatically. The visibility condition of the ridge is used to determine the directional directive magnitude by the ridge detection algorithm. The proposed method was evaluated with Notre Dame Contact Lens Detection 2013 database. Results showed that the proposed method has successfully segment the soft lens boundary with an accuracy of over 92%.