Welcome to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory's (ITL's) Information Access Division (IAD) iris recognition website. This website provides information on IAD iris recognition projects.

The IREX 08 Evaluation - Accuracy of Compact Iris Imagery

IREX 08 is being conducted to address two issues: First is how far compression can be pushed before the accuracy of leading commercial matching algorithms begins to degrade. Second, the accuracy of iris images in compact polar form when it is prepared by one supplier and verified later by another.

The program supports identity management applications where compact size and interoperability are of primary concern. These include federated identity credential or network-based applications.

The IREX II IQCE - Accuracy of Iris Image Quality Metrics

IQCE is being conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of iris image quality assessment algorithms. It seeks to identify iris image properties that are influential on recognition accuracy, and quantifying their effect, and collect and document iris image quality metircs.

The IREX Homepage

IREX I has a dedicated homepage.

IREX II IQCE now has a dedicated homepage.

The IREX Program

The NIST Interoperable Iris Program is being initiated at NIST in support of an expanded marketplace of iris-based applications based on standardized interoperable iris imagery. The work is primarily conducted in support of the ISO/IEC 19794-6 standard, now under revision. It secondarily supports the recently completed ANSI/NIST ITL 1-2007 Type 17 standard, as derived from the ISO/IEC 19794-6:2005 parent [STD05], and future revision thereof.

ICE 2006 Report: P. Jonathon Phillips, W. Todd Scruggs, Alice J. O’Toole, Patrick J. Flynn, Kevin W. Bowyer, Cathy L. Schott, and Matthew Sharpe. "FRVT 2006 and ICE 2006 Large-Scale Results." NISTIR 7408, March 2007.

Iris Recognition Meta-Analysis: Elaine M. Newton, P.Jonathon Phillips. "Meta-Analysis of Third-Party Evaluations of Iris Recognition." NISTIR 7440, August 2007. An "Overview" of this paper will be presented at and appear in the proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS), 27-29 September 2007. The authors also received an invitation to submit this paper to a special issue of the IEEE Trans System, Man and Cybernetics as one of the best BTAS papers.

The Iris Challenge Evaluation (ICE) project was conducted and managed by Dr. P. Jonathon Phillips at NIST. It was conducted simultaneously with the Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2006 and results are reported in a combined, multi-biometric report. The report is available for download above. For more information on this project, please click on the ICE Overview link to your left.

Other IAD iris reference material:

Depth of Field in Biometric Imaging 25 Apr 2007

Thank you for your interest in NIST iris recognition projects.