Iris recognition getting easier

Identifying people using iris recognition is becoming easier, according to a new report from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The Iris Exchange (IREX) III report which evaluated research of iris recognition software from 11 different sources – is said to be the first public and independent evaluation of commercially available algorithms that use iris recognition for finding an individual match within a large database of potential identities.

NIST evaluated 92 different iris recognition algorithms from nine companies and two university labs, all of which submitted software to an open competition held by NIST. The task was to identify individuals from a database of eye images taken from more than 2.2 million people. "If, for example, you are trying to pick out a fugitive who is trying to cross a national border, you need to know your software can identify that person from among millions of records," said Patrick Grother of NIST's information access division.