1. Retinal Scan Sami Lyden

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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)

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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.

11. 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

12. 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 50 ---------------------------------------- Statistics are from National Center for State Courts(US) and Biometric Technology, Inc Web pages (rev 2002)

13. 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

14. 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)

15. 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

16. 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..

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. Key References US Patent and Trademark Office. Patent Database: http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html (patents:) Biometric Technology, Inc http://www.bio-tech-inc.com/ Eye Dentify, Inc (Currently no Web-pages) Retinal Technologies, LLC http://www.retinaltech.com/