Hey @lgs Funny you should mention patents. Was just filling in...

Hey @lgs

Funny you should mention patents. Was just filling in some time doing some patent surfing and found a recent granting for IrisGuard - EU based company with what appears to be fairly decent Iris tech and ongoing contracts.

Btw....no one offering any sells on Chi-X at the mo either.....all dried up for now.

http://www.irisguard.com/

One of their patents (and updates to same) has just been granted in April 2015 and encompasses using reflections (specular - sound familiar?) from the eye to provide an additional layer of security to their Iris scanning tech.

Bit of a read if anyone feels like it.

Whilst their patent doesn't even nearly cover what WBT do (using Brownian motion on the tear film for the reflection and ultimate continual change in the film creating the ONE TIME PIN), it is merely a patent covering what they appear to think will assist the overall security in general terms - a reflection or glints as some call it, off the cornea. Appears doing it by multiple image frames (bit long winded) then comparing each against themselves to identify if the eye is live (eg. movement of the glints).

They obviously realise that the CSRA (WBT - Corneal Specular Reflex Authentication) style format is a warranted and potential tech that has the ability for liveness testing and extra security level - they just haven't really figured out to do it as WBT do

Excerpt from patent with a couple of bolds of statements I liked - thinking maybe I should email the link to WBT as a prospective licensee....lol....

http://patents.justia.com/patent/9008375

As with other known biometric identification systems, iris recognition identification systems are also susceptible to fraud, and accordingly security features are required to mitigate against such threats. One shortcoming of known iris recognition identification systems, is that they are unable to accurately distinguish between a photograph of an iris and a real iris.

Accordingly, it is possible to provoke a false positive identification result simply by presenting a suitably high-definition image of an iris for identification (i.e. for scanning) by an iris recognition identification system. In supervised environments, where the iris recognition identification system is operated by a human operator, this shortcoming does not present a cause for concern, since the operator supervises the iris image capture process, and can verify that a real iris is being presented to the iris recognition identification system.

In contrast, this security shortcoming presents a significant cause for concern in unsupervised environments, where the iris recognition identification system is operated in the absence of a supervising human operator. In such environments it is relatively straightforward to deceive the iris recognition identification system into generating a false-positive match by presenting a photograph, or similar captured image, of an iris to the iris recognition identification system. This shortcoming of known iris recognition identification systems severely limits the diverse environments in which they may be used.

To date, there is no known solution to this problem. Known iris recognition identification systems are used almost exclusively in supervised environments. Where iris recognition identification systems are used in unsupervised environments, there is a high risk of the systems being defrauded. Improved security features are thus required for iris recognition identification systems to reduce the security vulnerabilities of such systems, in addition to increasing the diverse range of environments in which iris recognition identification systems may be securely operated. In particular, improved security features are required to enable iris recognition identification systems to be operated in unsupervised environments where it is not possible to verify prior to iris image capture, that the iris presented for image capture is a real iris instead of a pre-captured image of the iris.

It is an object of the present invention to mitigate for the above described security shortcomings inherent in known prior art iris recognition identification systems, and in particular to provide an improved security feature which enables iris recognition identification systems to be securely operated in unsupervised environments by being able to accurately distinguish a real iris from an image of the iris.
SUMMARY

In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention, a method of verifying the authenticity of an eye provided for identification purposes in an iris recognition identification system, the method comprising: illuminating the eye using an illumination source to generate a specular reflection in a pupil and/or iris region of the eye, the specular reflection forming as a result of light emitted from the illumination source being reflected from the eye; capturing an image of the eye including the specular reflection; determining the position of the specular reflection formed in the pupil and/or iris region, from the captured image; and verifying the authenticity of the eye by comparing the determined position with an expected position for an authentic eye.

This aspect of the invention utilises the reflective properties of the human eye to verify its authenticity. The method is particularly effective at distinguishing a real eye from a photograph of an eye. Since the reflective characteristics of an object are dependent on its constituent material, and its physical characteristics, a photograph will not generate a specularity in the same way as an iris, and specifically it won't generate a specularity at the same position in the pupil and/or iris region as an authentic eye would. The deterministic nature of the specularity position in the pupil/iris region arising from light incident on the cornea thus enables the specularity to be used as a security feature in an iris recognition identification system to minimise the likelihood of the system generating false positive iris identification results when the system is presented with a photograph of an eye, or such like in place of a real eye for identification.