Editing Iris recognition (section)

== Advantages ==
The iris of the eye has been described as the ideal part of the human body for biometric identification for several reasons:

It is an internal organ that is well protected against damage and wear by a highly transparent and sensitive membrane (the [[cornea]]). This distinguishes it from fingerprints, which can be difficult to recognize after years of certain types of manual labor. The iris is mostly flat, and its geometric configuration is only controlled by two complementary muscles (the sphincter pupillae and dilator pupillae) that control the diameter of the pupil. This makes the iris shape far more predictable than, for instance, that of the face.

The iris has a fine texture that—like fingerprints—is determined randomly during embryonic [[gestation]]. Like the fingerprint, it is very hard (if not impossible) to prove that the iris is unique. However, there are so many factors that go into the formation of these textures (the iris and fingerprint) that the chance of false matches for either is extremely low. Even genetically identical individuals (and the left and right eyes of the same individual) have completely independent iris textures. An iris scan is similar to taking a photograph and can be performed from about 10&nbsp;cm to a few meters away. There is no need for the person being identified to touch any equipment that has recently been touched by a stranger, thereby eliminating an objection that has been raised in some cultures against fingerprint scanners, where a finger has to touch a surface, or retinal scanning, where the eye must be brought very close to an eyepiece (like looking into a microscope).<ref name="emerging">{{cite news|url=http://secureidnews.com/news-item/biometric-trends-will-emerging-modalities-and-mobile-applications-bring-mass-adoption/?tag=biometrics&tag=Law_Enforcement|title=Biometric Trends: Will emerging modalities and mobile applications bring mass adoption?|first=Zach|last=Martin|work=SecureIDNews|date=2011-03-23|access-date=2013-07-14}}</ref>

The commercially deployed iris-recognition algorithm, [[John Daugman]]'s IrisCode, has an unprecedented [[Type I error|false match]] rate (better than 10<sup>−11</sup> if a Hamming distance threshold of 0.26 is used, meaning that up to 26% of the bits in two IrisCodes are allowed to disagree due to imaging noise, reflections, etc., while still declaring them to be a match).<ref>"Probing the uniqueness and randomness of IrisCodes: Results from 200 billion iris pair comparisons." Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 94 (11), 2006, pp. 1927-1935.</ref> While there are some medical and surgical procedures that can affect the colour and overall shape of the iris, the fine texture remains remarkably stable over many decades. Some iris identifications have succeeded over a period of about 30 years.

Iris recognition works with clear [[contact lens]]es, [[eyeglasses]], and non-mirrored [[sunglasses]]. The early Sensar technology worked by first finding the face, then the eyes, and then took the Iris images. This was all done using infrared lighting. It is possible to identify someone uniquely in a dark room while they were wearing sunglasses.

Mathematically, iris recognition based upon the original Daugman patents or other similar or related patents define the strongest biometric in the world. Iris recognition will uniquely identify anyone, and easily discerns between identical twins. If a human can verify the process by which the iris images are obtained (at a customs station, entering or even walking by an embassy, as a desktop 2nd factor for authentication, etc.) or through the use of live eye detection (which varies lighting to trigger slight dilation of the pupil and variations across a quick scan which may take several image snapshots) then the integrity of the identification are extremely high.