Retinal Scan Sami Lyden

Presentation ● Biometrics – Method – Advantages – Disadvantages ● Retinal recognition – Scanners – Methods ● Comparison ● Developement?

Biometrics: Eye ● Eye is fully developed at birth ● Doesn't significally chage during life ● Individually unique pattern of veins at retina ● Vein patterns and intersections are fixed ● Veins emanate from the optic nerve ● Method dates to 1930's

Biometrics: Advantages ● Isolated biometrics – Difficult to reach – Easy to read ● Insignificant interference ● Stable ● Unique ● Protected ● Insensitive to environmental conditions ● Extremely accurate verificator Twin A Twin B

Biometrics: Disadvantages ● Difficult to reach – There are no completely non-intrusive scanning methods – Very little development in the area ● Medical scanners are made for accurasy ● There is huge amount of usable identification data but current methods only use very small portion of it ● Resources are directed to other methods ● Eye is vulnerable to disease and trauma ● Most(?) scanners now require interaction (eye focus and direction)

Recognition: History ● First automated retinal scanner and indentifier was patented 1977 by Robert B. Hill – Used green diodes to reflect light from the fundus – The light reflected from blood vessels was identified and mapped for recognition Eye Dentify's Retinal scanner, 1989.

Recognition: History (cont.) ● System first detected the optic nerve ● Then scanned the region using 360 diodes ● Veins are then mapped as features ● Acuired data is very simple. The verification process is very fast

Recognition: History (cont.) ● The scanner is replaced by infrared Laser scanners during 80's ● Scanners still require the target to remain very close to scanners ● The scanners are large complicated and expensive. Koji Kobayashi's scanner Robert H. Webb's scanner

Recognition: History (cont.) ● First scanners also used lasers with so high energy that some left the target dazed after the scan ● Other more lucrative methods replace the retinal scanning as more user friendly ● Almost all resources are diverted to other biometrics study ● Only research is done in private high security installations. (If any) ● Scanners are still developed for medical purposes

Retinal Recognition: New Beginning? ● Retinal Technologies, is a company that has developed medical scanners has come up with new method derived from those medical scanners. ● Entire retina is illuminated at once using infrared laser.

Comparison ● The data is very simple. Allows quick 1:N searches ● Data is also very accurate which allows effective 1:1 comparison ● Almost no unwanted interfering data ● Very few comparison tests are available ● No exact up to date FAR's or FRR's available ● Still the method is considered the most accurate method of all Biometrics

Comparison (cont.) ● Biometric data allows very accurate verification – Problem is the scanner. ● They currently operate at 1m distance ● Retinal scanners are used at High-End security installations Crossover error Fingerprint1 in 500 Hand Geometry1 in 500 Speaker Recog.1 in 50 Iris Scan1 in 131,000 Retinal Scan1 in 10,000,000 Signature Recog1 in Statistics are from National Center for State Courts(US) and Biometric Technology, Inc Web pages (rev 2002)

Comparison (cont.) ● Forging fake retina is virtually impossible ● Bloodvessels quickly deteriorate after death – 1:1 verification is still possible after death ● Infrared scanner could be used to detect blood flow at the vessels ● Other methods could be used to verify the eye is living ● Scanning operation also requires for the eye to focus at the reader

Comparison (cont.) ● Retinal scanning is not influensed by out side interference – lighting, aging, injury, air conditions, temperature... ● People naturally protect their eyes – Smaller chance for injury – People wont be able to accept the idea of laser beam being fired into the eye. (never)

Retinal Scanners ● There are 2 players at the market currently ● Eye Dentify is the main suplier of retinal scanners – They don't produce final security products but use re-sellers ● Retinal Technology has produced a new method

Retinal Scanners ● Both scanners are fast – Eye Dentify's take less than 2sec for scan ● They are insensitive to environmental conditions – (claim to be. Wonder if they workoutside when its raining) ● Both work up to 3' (1m) ● Cost effective – According to the manufacturers. I coudn't find any actual prices..

Retinal Technologies ● On April 1st, 2002, Retinal Technologies received a notice of allowance from the US patent office. – Method for generating a unique and consistent signal pattern for identification of an individual ● Exact data of the above method is not currently available ● Also owns other patents for medical retinal scanners

Retinal Technologies ● The scanning method for Retinal technologies is similar to that of the Eye Dentify ● Scanning works in 4 steps ● First the intensity profile is extracted ● Step two: A scan

Retinal Technologies ● Step Three: The blood Veins are located ● Step Four: A Circular Bar Code is generated from the veins ● This produces a relatively short data template

Future? ● One of the problems for Retinal Scanning is that the method for identifying has been extremely efficient but the scanner have been expensive and intrusive so this has not been a very lucrative method and recourses have been placed elsewhere ● The scanners have been developed for medical purposes -> they have become faster and smaller ● But the problem of intrusiveness remains. ● Still as a highly accurate method that cannot be fooled the high security installations will continue to use and possibly develope the scanners

Key References US Patent and Trademark Office. Patent Database: (patents:) Biometric Technology, Inc Eye Dentify, Inc (Currently no Web-pages) Retinal Technologies, LLC