Abstract
Iris localization plays a decisive role in the overall iris biometric system's performance, because it isolates the valid part of iris. This study proposes a reliable iris localization technique. It includes the following. First, it extracts the iris inner contour within a sliding-window in an eye image using a multi-valued adaptive threshold and the two-dimensional (2D) properties of binary objects. Then, it localizes the iris outer contour using an edge-detecting operator in a sub image centered at the pupil center. Finally, it regularizes the iris contours to compensate for their non-circular structure. The proposed technique is tested on the following public iris databases: CASA V1.0, CASIA-Iris-Lamp, IITD V1.0, and the MMU V1.0. The experimental and accuracy results of the proposed scheme compared with other state-of-the-art techniques endorse its satisfactory performance. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.