Developing reliable iris recognition and presentation attack detection methods requires diverse datasets that capture realistic variations in iris features and a wide spectrum of anomalies. Because of the rich texture of iris images, which spans a wide range of spatial frequencies, synthesizing same-identity iris images while controlling specific attributes remains challenging. In this work, we introduce a new iris image augmentation strategy by traversing a generative model's latent space toward latent codes that represent same-identity samples but with some desired iris image properties manipulated. The latent space traversal is guided by a gradient of specific geometrical, textural, or quality-related iris image features (e.g., sharpness, pupil size, iris size, or pupil-to-iris ratio) and preserves the identity represented by the image being manipulated. The proposed approach can be easily extended to manipulate any attribute for which a differentiable loss term can be formulated. Additionally, our approach can use either randomly generated images using either a pre-train GAN model or real-world iris images. W e can utilize GAN inversion to project any given iris image into the latent space and obtain its corresponding latent code.

--Can we teach machines to assess the expertise of humans solving visual tasks automatically based on eye tracking features? This paper proposes AutoSIGHT, Automatic System for Immediate Grading of Human experTise, that classifies expert and non-expert performers, and builds upon an ensemble of features extracted from eye tracking data while the performers were solving a visual task. Results on the task of iris Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) used for this study show that with a small evaluation window of just 5 seconds, AutoSIGHT achieves an average average Area Under the ROC curve performance of 0.751 in subject-disjoint train-test regime, indicating that such detection is viable. Furthermore, when a larger evaluation window of up to 30 seconds is available, the Area Under the ROC curve (AUROC) increases to 0.8306, indicating the model is effectively leveraging more information at a cost of slightly delayed decisions. This work opens new areas of research on how to incorporate the automatic weighing of human and machine expertise into human-AI pairing setups, which need to react dynamically to nonstationary expertise distribution between the human and AI players ( e.g., when the experts need to be replaced, or the task at hand changes rapidly). Along with this paper, we offer the eye tracking data used in this study collected from 6 experts and 53 non-experts solving iris PAD visual task. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems become more commonplace in everyday tasks, companies and researchers alike understand that a lack of trust in a model or the validity of a model's decision is a major obstacle to wide-scale adoption [1]. This has led to the sub-field of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (T AI) that focuses on defining the core principles that AI systems should satisfy to increase trust and adoption. One such principle is that good models should generalize well to unseen data types (that is, operate well in an open set recognition regime). Another principle is that there should exist a seamless and effective collaboration between the AI and humans solving the tasks jointly, in which the capabilities of both sides are appropriately and automatically assessed, and incorporated into the decision-making process.

The use of the iris as a biometric identifier has increased dramatically over the last 30 years, prompting privacy and security concerns about the use of iris images in research. It can be difficult to acquire iris image databases due to ethical concerns, and this can be a barrier for those performing biometrics research. In this paper, we describe and show how to create a database of realistic, biometrically unidentifiable colored iris images by training a diffusion model within an open-source diffusion framework. Not only were we able to verify that our model is capable of creating iris textures that are biometrically unique from the training data, but we were also able to verify that our model output creates a full distribution of realistic iris pigmentations. We highlight the fact that the utility of diffusion networks to achieve these criteria with relative ease, warrants additional research in its use within the context of iris database generation and presentation attack security.

Blind iris images, which result from unknown degradation during the process of iris recognition at long distances, often lead to decreased iris recognition rates. Currently, little existing literature offers a solution to this problem. In response, we propose a prior embedding-driven architecture for long distance blind iris recognition. We first proposed a blind iris image restoration network called Iris-PPRGAN. To effectively restore the texture of the blind iris, Iris-PPRGAN includes a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) used as a Prior Decoder, and a DNN used as the encoder. To extract iris features more efficiently, we then proposed a robust iris classifier by modifying the bottleneck module of InsightFace, which called Insight-Iris. A low-quality blind iris image is first restored by Iris-PPRGAN, then the restored iris image undergoes recognition via Insight-Iris. Experimental results on the public CASIA-Iris-distance dataset demonstrate that our proposed method significantly superior results to state-of-the-art blind iris restoration methods both quantitatively and qualitatively, Specifically, the recognition rate for long-distance blind iris images reaches 90% after processing with our methods, representing an improvement of approximately ten percentage points compared to images without restoration.

Synthesis of same-identity biometric iris images, both for existing and non-existing identities while preserving the identity across a wide range of pupil sizes, is complex due to intricate iris muscle constriction mechanism, requiring a precise model of iris non-linear texture deformations to be embedded into the synthesis pipeline. This paper presents the first method of fully data-driven, identity-preserving, pupil size-varying s ynthesis of iris images. This approach is capable of synthesizing images of irises with different pupil sizes representing non-existing identities as well as non-linearly deforming the texture of iris images of existing subjects given the segmentation mask of the target iris image. Iris recognition experiments suggest that the proposed deformation model not only preserves the identity when changing the pupil size but offers better similarity between same-identity iris samples with significant differences in pupil size, compared to state-of-the-art linear and non-linear (bio-mechanical-based) iris deformation models. Two immediate applications of the proposed approach are: (a) synthesis of, or enhancement of the existing biometric datasets for iris recognition, mimicking those acquired with iris sensors, and (b) helping forensic human experts in examining iris image pairs with significant differences in pupil dilation. Source codes and weights of the models are made available with the paper.

The capability of doing effective forensic analysis on printed and scanned (PS) images is essential in many applications. PS documents may be used to conceal the artifacts of images which is due to the synthetic nature of images since these artifacts are typically present in manipulated images and the main artifacts in the synthetic images can be removed after the PS. Due to the appeal of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), synthetic face images generated with GANs models are difficult to differentiate from genuine human faces and may be used to create counterfeit identities. Additionally, since GANs models do not account for physiological constraints for generating human faces and their impact on human IRISes, distinguishing genuine from synthetic IRISes in the PS scenario becomes extremely difficult. As a result of the lack of large-scale reference IRIS datasets in the PS scenario, we aim at developing a novel dataset to become a standard for Multimedia Forensics (MFs) investigation which is available at [45]. In this paper, we provide a novel dataset made up of a large number of synthetic and natural printed IRISes taken from VIPPrint Printed and Scanned face images. We extracted irises from face images and it is possible that the model due to eyelid occlusion captured the incomplete irises. To fill the missing pixels of extracted iris, we applied techniques to discover the complex link between the iris images. To highlight the problems involved with the evaluation of the dataset's IRIS images, we conducted a large number of analyses employing Siamese Neural Networks to assess the similarities between genuine and synthetic human IRISes, such as ResNet50, Xception, VGG16, and MobileNet-v2. For instance, using the Xception network, we achieved 56.76\% similarity of IRISes for synthetic images and 92.77% similarity of IRISes for real images.

In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review of more than 200 papers, technical reports, and GitHub repositories published over the last 10 years on the recent developments of deep learning techniques for iris recognition, covering broad topics on algorithm designs, open-source tools, open challenges, and emerging research. First, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of deep learning techniques developed for two main sub-tasks in iris biometrics: segmentation and recognition. Second, we focus on deep learning techniques for the robustness of iris recognition systems against presentation attacks and via human-machine pairing. Third, we delve deep into deep learning techniques for forensic application, especially in post-mortem iris recognition. Fourth, we review open-source resources and tools in deep learning techniques for iris recognition. Finally, we highlight the technical challenges, emerging research trends, and outlook for the future of deep learning in iris recognition.

The main advantage of using biometric information over traditional methods is that instead of requiring information that the user should know or possess (password, codes, PIN, etc.), they use characteristics that univocally and biologically define the users (fingerprints, iris, face, etc.). In particular, these characteristics are universal (all users can be measured), singular (each user has its own measures), permanent in time and context, and can be quantitatively measured [33]. Soft biometrics can be divided into two groups: physical and behavioural biometrics. Techniques of the first category use physical characteristics like face, iris, and fingerprint for their tasks [4], whereas techniques of the second one, use information extracted from user behaviours such as signature, voice, and keyboard typing [39]. Among the physical biometrics, face [15] and fingerprint [2] methodology have been the most explored, and have already been used in many real-world applications such as airport scanners, banking, military access control, smartphones or forensics [7, 36]. However, in the last decade, the use of iris has begun to attract interest in applications such as gender classification [27], iris liveness detection [8], border control [45] and citizen confirmation [22]. In fact, iris biometric represents a secure biometric with low forgery and error rates due to its highly certain features [43]. Furthermore, this biometric information is usually combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning techniques (ML) in order to implement user identification and verification systems.

Massive biometric deployments are pervasive in today's world. But despite the high accuracy of biometric systems, their computational efficiency degrades drastically with an increase in the database size. Thus, it is essential to index them. An ideal indexing scheme needs to generate codes that preserve the intra-subject similarity as well as inter-subject dissimilarity. Here, in this paper, we propose an iris indexing scheme using real-valued deep iris features binarized to iris bar codes (IBC) compatible with the indexing structure. Firstly, for extracting robust iris features, we have designed a network utilizing the domain knowledge of ordinal filtering and learning their nonlinear combinations. Later these real-valued features are binarized. Finally, for indexing the iris dataset, we have proposed a loss that can transform the binary feature into an improved feature compatible with the Multi-Index Hashing scheme. This loss function ensures the hamming distance equally distributed among all the contiguous disjoint sub-strings. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work in the iris indexing domain that presents an end-to-end iris indexing structure. Experimental results on four datasets are presented to depict the efficacy of the proposed approach.

The FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services, nearly seven years after piloting the concept, will add iris recognition technology to its portfolio of identification services for law enforcement agencies. Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's deputy assistant director for criminal justice information services, said the CJIS Advisory Policy Board and FBI Director Chris Wray recently approved the iris-recognition technology. Capturing iris images, Del Greco added, can be "easily integrated" into the existing biometric process using near-infrared cameras. All iris images added into the FBI's searchable iris image repository must be associated with fingerprints submitted as part of an arrest. The bureau launched its iris recognition pilot in 2013, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report, with the intention of helping criminal justice agencies quickly and accurately identify or confirm someone's identity. "An iris offers highly accurate, contactless and rapid biometric identification option for agencies.