Computer Can Pick You Out From Your Eyes In A Crowd: ‘Needle in
Haystack’ Search Capability Identifying people by acquiring
pictures of their eyes is becoming easier, according to a new
report* from the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST). NIST researchers evaluated the performance of iris
recognition software from 11 different organizations and found
that some techniques produced very rapid results—though this
speed was often at the cost of accuracy. NIST evaluated 92
different iris recognition algorithms from nine private
companies and two university labs, all of which submitted
software to an open competition held by NIST. The task was to
identify individuals from a database of eye images taken from
more than 2.2 million people. “If, for example, you are trying
to pick out a fugitive who is trying to cross a national border,
you need to know your software can identify that person from
among millions of records,” says Patrick Grother, a scientist in
NIST’s Information Access Division. “Thi