FORGET passports and driving licences. Soon the only proof of identity you'll need is your eyes. A study published this week comfirms that iris scans are faster and more accurate than any other computerised means of identifying people, such as fingerprint, face or voice recognition.
Most iris recognition systems are based on software created by John Daugman of Cambridge University. An image of an iris, with all the tiny pits, ridges and strings of tissue that make it unique, is turned into a series of three-dimensional contour maps. Then this information is compressed into a code of 1s and 0s just 2048 digits long. This code can be stored or checked against existing records in a database for a match.
Daugman has used this system to make 2.3 million random comparisons between images of over 2000 different irises from people in Britain, the US and Japan. The study shows that ...
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