AUTOMATIC SEGMENTATION OF IRIS IMAGES FOR THE PURPOSE OF

IDENTIFICATION

Amjad Zaim

InfoMD Consultancy Group

Toledo, Ohio USA
www.infomd.org
amjad@infomd.org

ABSTRACT eye (Figure 1; left). Ideally, it shares high-contrast

Automatic recognition of the human iris is essential for
the purpose of personal identification and verification
from eye images. The human iris is known to possess
structures that are distinct and unique to each individual.
Accurate classification, however, depends on proper
segmentation of the iris and the pupil. In this paper, we
present a new method for automatically localizing and
segmenting the iris with no operator intervention. Circular
region growing is first used to localize the eye’s centroid.
We then utilize several geometrical features of the eye to
constraint a model built in the polar image space. The
model employs knowledge of anatomical attributes as well
as gradient information to extract the iris boundaries.
Applying this method to 352 images revealed 92%
segmentation accuracy. The algorithm has shown to be
effective in various levels of illumination and for images
with large field of view containing other facial features.
1. INTRODUCTION
The problem of automatic identification and verification of
individuals to restrict access to secured sites has been
tackled by a variety of biometrically-based approaches
from fingerprints, voice, handwritten signatures and even
facial features. The iris has recently been recognized as a
highly distinct feature that is unique to each individual
[1,2]. It is composed of several layers which gives it its
unique appearance. This uniqueness is visually apparent
when looking at its rich and small details seen in high-
resolution camera images under proper focus and
illumination. The iris is the ring-shape structure that
encircles the pupil, the dark centered portion of the eye,
and stretches radially to the sclera, the white portion of the
boundaries with the pupil but less-contrast boundaries
with the sclera. Diseases of the eye and exposure to certain
environmental conditions, however, can reverse this effect
and drastically alter its appearance although these
conditions are rare [3]. Reactions to different levels of
illuminations have shown to produce small changes in the
diameter of the pupil and do result in severe distortion of
the iris. All these factors make the iris a potential
candidate for personal identification.
An identification system typically consists of 1) image
data acquisition, 2) iris localization and segmentation and
3) pattern matching [1,4]. The design of an image-
capturing system requires that sufficient resolution is
maintained in order to capture the small details of the iris,
typically 1cm in diameter, with a level of illumination
high enough to provide good contrast in its interior
portion without causing discomfort and irritation to the
individual’s eye. An 80-mm lens, f-stop 11 and a 1 cm
depth of field has been reported to produce reasonable
quality images [5].
Iris localization and segmentation of camera images,
however, poses a significant challenge for many reasons.
The eyelids can obscure substantial portions of the eye.
The shape and dimensions of the eye vary from one
subject to another and depends on its position in relation
to the sensor. In addition, low-level illumination and
certain diseases of the eye can greatly degrade the contrast
in pupil-iris boundaries. Previous studies have made use
of the geometrical nature of the eye. The eye was modeled
with circular contour fitted through gradient ascend to
search for the global minimum using deformable template
[5]. An approach based on an analysis of the image
gradient pattern corresponding to an eye, including
motion information has also been presented [6]. The
pupil/iris boundaries also have been detected and localized
via edge detection and Hough transform was used to

0-7803-9134-9/05/$20.00 ©2005 IEEE

capture the contours of interest [7]. Other methods
included symmetrical circular filter and principle
component analysis for feature extraction [8-10]. We
developed an accurate model-based segmentation scheme
that is tolerable of low-illumination level and wider filed
images, and is guarded against obstructive features such as
eyelids. The system has shown good performance when
applied to 352 images with 92% accuracy.
2. IRIS SEGMENTATION
Our system models the iris as a ring-shaped object
concentric around the disk-shaped pupil. Gray-scale
camera images of 280x320 pixels containing one eye are
processed in the following fashion. First, occluding
eyelashes are removed by morphological closing. Next, the
center of the pupil is localized by fist applying Split and
Merge algorithm to detect connected regions of uniform
intensity and then growing a circular template to
distinguish the pupil from other potential circular or semi-
circular objects. A model-based algorithm is then applied
in the polar-sampled space and an edge linking scheme is
used to detect the horizontally-mapped boundaries of the
iris. The algorithm returns a set of model parameters
including the radii of the circular contours of the pupil
and the iris as well as the centroid they share. The steps
are discusses in more details in the next sections.
2.1. Morphological Closing
Eyelashes can severely occlude the iris and interfere with
the segmentation process. The eyelashes can be described
in the image as the dark, long and narrow structures that
are oriented randomly around the eye (Figure 1; left).
Morphological closing is a well know filter frequently
used in image processing to fuse narrow breaks and long
gulfs in binary and gray-scale images [8,9]. The Closing
of an image A by a structuring element B can be simply
defined as the dilation of A by B followed by erosion of
the results by B or:
A • B = ( A ⊕ B )Θ B (1)
The initial dilation process removes the dark details
and brightens the image. The subsequent erosion process
darkens the image without reintroducing the details
removed by dilation. We used a flat linear structuring
element of 15-pixel length. The closing process was
applied iteratively while the linear structuring element
was incrementally rotated by a 5-degrees interval to
account for the random orientation of the eyelashes. The
closed image contained smoother features with smeared
eyelashes (Figure 1; right).
2.2. Centroid Localization
Given the circular nature of the iris and the pupil, the first
step in segmentation after eyelashes removal begins with
localizing the centroid shared by both the iris and the
pupil. The darkness of the pupil stems from its absorption
of light and, in some cases, diseases or improper
illumination may reverse this effect. We first apply Split
and Merge algorithm to detect connected regions of
uniform intensity [11,12]. A criterion for disjoining a
region Rm is that 80% of the pixels contained in Rm have
the property:
| I(x,y) – µ(m) | ≤ σ(m) (2)
Where I(x,y) is the intensity level, µ(m) and σ(m) are
the gray-level mean and the standard deviation in Rm,
respectively. The shape of the extracted regions is
classified into a circle by growing a disk-shape template
centered at the first moment of each region. The template
that produces the maximum normalized energy is
identified as the one that has the centroid of the pupil. The
centroid is also moved around few pixels upward,
downward and sideways until an optimal centroid is
reached.
2.3. Cartesian-to-Polar Mapping
We have used Cartesian-to-Polar mapping in the past to
reconstruct rectangular-shaped ultrasound images from
fan-shaped images collected around a point source
[13,14]. Samples were obtained from rays irradiating
outward from a central point. Resampling the caretsian
image space (x,y) into the polar image space (r,θ) is done
according to:
r = [( x − xo ) 2 + ( y − yo )]1 / 2 (3)
⎛ y − yo ⎞ (4)
θ = arctan ⎜⎜ ⎟
⎝ x − xo ⎟⎠
For each grid point (x,y) of the destination image, the
polar coordinates are computed with respect to a centroid
(xo,yo) and its grayscale value is interpolated from its
nearest neighbors in the source image. Ideally, a circle
centered on the point (xo,yo) is mapped onto a line
stretching along the angular range (0-2π). For example,
the pupil and iris boundary contours are mapped to near
horizontal edges with linearity depending on how
concentric the contours are with respect to the centroid.
Although this is not a one-to-one transformation, most of
the image content is recovered in the polar space except
toward the periphery where significant loss of resolution
occurs as a result of interpolation. We used a small angle
of 0.5o for sampling interval to minimize this effect which
becomes more prominent at some distance away from the
center. In general, objects in the resultant transformed
image appear much like flexible bent curved objects that
were unfolded or stretched into their flat form (Figure 2;
left).
2.2. Gradient-Based Edge Detection and Linking
Our model exploits few observations that can be made
from the polar-sampled image. First, the intensity
distribution of the eye changes as one crosses from pupil
to iris and from iris to sclera. Hence, taking the radial
derivative of the image intensity in the direction of r
reveals two set of boundaries. Second, the two boundaries
are horizontal or near horizontal and can be detected
using the local maximum of the image gradient. We also
utilize the anatomical criteria of the eye that the iris-pupil
radii ratio is greater than 4.0 or less than 1.75 [3]. The last
observation is used as an upper constraint to prevent the
iris from crossing over to the sclera region or toward the
pupil in cases of severe noise or light reflection. The
following steps summarize our edge detection scheme:
1) For horizontal edges, the gradient of the image has the
following properties:
∇ G y = max, ∇ G x = 0
We extract horizontal edges by obtaining the first gradient
in the θ- and r- direction using the following Sobel masks:
The horizontal direction with small tolerance is chosen to
be the criteria direction consistent throughout the edges.
4) Merge horizontally-connected edge chains by fitting
line segments to their edge points. Only the two sets of
line segments that differ by less than 3o are kept.
5) The distance between the two lines that correspond to
the highest number of segments are tested against the two
conditions: (riris/rpupil < 4.0) AND (riris/rpupil > 1.75). If any
of the two conditions are true, ignore and consider next
possible segment sets.
The result of the above algorithm is a map of two line
segments overlaying the edges of the iris and the pupil
(Figure 3). The average vertical distances to the first and
second lines of edges are considered to be rpupil and riris,
respectively. When these parameters along with the
centroid (xo,yo) are mapped back to the original iris image,
the resulting contours can be seen to accurately overlays
the pupil and the iris (Figure 4).
(5)
Figure 1: Original camera image of the eye showing the iris
(left). The iris image after morphological closing with eyelashes
removed (right).

⎡ 1 2 1 ⎤ ⎡1 0 − 1⎤
⎢ (6)
S horizontal = ⎢
0 0 0 ⎥⎥ S vertical = ⎢
⎢
2 0 − 2 ⎥⎥
⎢⎣ − 1 −2 − 1⎥⎦ ⎢⎣ 1 0 − 1 ⎥⎦

A typical gradient image in r-direction includes strong r

edges at high-contrast areas of dark-to-bright zones such ↑
as the pupil-iris interface, weaker and wider edges at areas →θ
of less-contrast along the iris-sclera interface, and other Figure 2: Result of polar mapping of the lower half of the
scattered edges (Figure 2; right). The gradient magnitude original image with pupil and iris mapped into horizontal
in θ-direction is zero along horizontal edges. structures (left). Gradient image produced by horizontal Sobel
operator (right).
2) We search for the edges that satisfy (5) by keeping the
points whose gradient magnitude is a local maximum in
the θ-direction and zero in the r-direction. For a central
pixel, P, the two neighbors in the direction that is closest
to the direction of the gradient gp are checked and if gp is
largest, it is incremented by half its magnitude while the
others are eliminated [12]. The process is iterated and the riris
result is an edge map with only one best point across a rpupil
given border at any point along θ-axis.
3) Build 8-connected pixels edge chains along the r- Figure 3: A map of line segments masking the iris and the pupil
direction using forward and backward neighbors along θ. edges.

Figure 4: Segmentation results with contours outlining the pupil
and the iris.
Method Accuracy Mean Time
Wildes[1] 98.6% 8.28s
Daugman[5] 99.5% 6.56s
Proposed 92.7% 5.83s
Table 1. Comparison with other algorithms..
3. RESULTS
We obtained camera eye images of 100 human subjects
with diverse shapes and orientation from an online
database. Good localization was obtained in images of low
contrast in the iris-sclera interface (12 to 20 gray-level
difference). However, images of low contrast in the pupil-
iris interface were not available for tests. At the other
extreme, excess illumination has not prevented accurate
localization but caused error in 9 localization attempts.
Imperfection in the circular nature of the iris boundary
localization also caused 18 miss-localizations. Overall, a
total of 352 eye images resulted in 320 correct
segmentation based on visual assessment and a
performance accuracy of 92%. The average execution time
needed for the entire process of segmentation is about 6
seconds when performed on a regular 789 MHz desktop
computer. Table 1 shows comparison of the proposed
method with other segmentation algorithms. While our
method reports lower segmentation accuracy, it
outperforms the others in terms of speed.
4. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we described a fast and effective real-time
algorithm for localizing and segmenting the iris and pupil
boundaries of the eye from camera images. Our approach
detects the center and the boundaries quickly and reliably,
even in the presence of eyelashes, under very low contrast
interface and in the presence of excess illumination.
Results have demonstrated 92% accuracy rate with a
relatively rapid execution time. It is suggested that this
algorithm can serve as an essential component for iris
recognition applications.
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