Extended depth-of-field iris recognition system for a workstation environment
Ramkumar Narayanswamy, Paulo E. X. Silveira, Harsha Setty, V. Paúl Pauca, Joseph van der Gracht · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2005
Iris recognition imaging is attracting considerable interest as a viable alternative for personal identification and verification in many defense and security applications. However current iris recognition systems suffer from limited depth of field, which makes usage of these systems more difficult by an untrained user. Traditionally, the depth of field is increased by reducing the imaging system aperture, which adversely impacts the light capturing power and thus the system signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In this paper we discuss a computational imaging system, referred to as Wavefront Coded(R) imaging, for increasing the depth of field without sacrificing the SNR or the resolution of the imaging system. This system employs a especially designed Wavefront Coded lens customized for iris recognition. We present experimental results that show the benefits of this technology for biometric identification.