EyeLock Single Camera For Acquiring Iris Biometrics And Face Images

PRNewswire: EyeLock LLC announces that the USPTO has issued Patent 9,646,217 on a single camera to acquire iris biometrics as well as a face image by providing suitable illumination adjustments between the two acquisitions:

• It uses a single image sensor to acquire a face image and an iris image suitable for iris recognition;
• determines the distance of the subject from the image sensor, so that suitable illumination levels can be provided even when the two types of images are being captured in quick succession;
• links the face image to the iris image, which allows the face image to be used for liveness confirmation of the iris biometrics; and
• allows the acquisition of the face image to serve as biometric deterrence and the face image to be optionally stored for future dispute resolution.

The EyeLock reference designs are said to have working distances of up to 60 cm with a false accept rate of 1 in 1.5 million for single eye authentication and a false reject rate of less than 1%.

From the patent: "Since reflectance of a face is different from that of an iris, acquiring an image of an iris and a face from the same person with a single sensor according to prior methods and systems has yielded poor results. Past practice required two cameras or sensors or, in the cases of one sensor, the sensor and illuminators were operated at constant settings.

We have discovered a method and related system for carrying out the method which captures a high quality image of an iris and the face of a person with single sensor or camera having a sensor by acquiring at least two images with small time elapse between each acquisition by changing the sensor or camera settings and/or illumination settings between the iris acquisition(s) and the face acquisition(s)."