A Novel High Performance
Iris and Pupil Localization Method
M. Alipoor*, H. Ahopay**, and J. Haddadnia***
Engineering Department, Tarbiat Moallem University of Sabzevar, Sabzevar, Iran
*mohammad.alipoor@ymail.com, **hosein_ahopay@yahoo.com, ***haddadnia@sttu.ac.ir
Abstract: Iris detection is a computationally intensive task in the
overall iris biometric processing. In this paper we proposed a
technique to localize the iris and the pupil in eye images
efficiently and accurately. This paper includes three stages: The
first stage is related to finding the centre and radius of pupil. In
this stage, the problem of pupil non-uniformity which may
appear in some images is solved and the pupil is detected. In the
second stage a new approach, based on circular arc search, is
proposed to extract iris boundary. The last stage includes
wavelet-based feature extraction and classifier design. Our
approach has been applied on the CASIA standard database.
High accuracy of the proposed iris localization method resulted
in a high performance iris recognition system.
Keywords: Iris recognition, Iris and pupil localization,
Nearest neighbor classifier.
1. Introduction
The recent advances in information technology and
increasing emphasis on security have resulted in more
attention to automatic personal identification system based
on biometrics. Biometric technology is an automated
method for recognizing an individual based on
physiological or behavioral characteristics. Among the
present biometric traits, the iris is known to be the most
reliable and accurate [1] due to the rich texture of iris
patterns. The human iris is an annular part between the
pupil and the white sclera. The iris has distinct
characteristics such as freckles, coronas, stripes, furrows,
crypts, and so on. Each eye contains unique iris pattern that
is stable throughout ones life. These characteristics make it
attractive for using as a biometric trait. To identify
individual in iris localization task, we try to locate iris part
in an eye image. Iris part localization is necessary to isolate
the iris part of the image, namely between the iris boundary
(between sclera and iris) and outlines of the pupil. This
task mainly consists of two sub tasks: detecting pupil
boundary (between pupil and iris), and detecting iris
boundary (between iris and sclera).
It is appropriate to follow the discussion with a brief
review of related works: Daugman's system [1-2] uses
978-1-4244-9708-9/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE
integro-differential operator to detect pupil and iris
boundary. Integro-differential operator fits the circular
contours via gradient ascent on the parameterized centre
and radius of the circular contour. This operator is
sensitive to the specular spot reflection of non diffused
artificial light. Daugman's new system [3] uses active
contour model to detect pupil and iris boundary. Wildes [4]
and Masek [5] use binary edge map and voting each edge
points to instantiate particular contour parameter values to
detect pupil and iris boundary. The edge map is recovered
via gradient-based edge detection. Prior to fit iris boundary
contours, the derivatives are weighted to select vertical
edges. As a simple but efficient method, Ma et al. [6]
calculate the summation of intensity values along each row
and each column. They choose the particular row and
column along which the summation takes minimum value.
That row and column are assumed as approximative x- and
y coordinate of pupil centre. Once the approximative pupil
centre is found they apply canny edge detection [7] and
Hough transformation [8] in a rectangular region centred at
pupil centre to detect pupil and iris boundary circles.
The above mentioned methods are often very
complicated and suffer from computationally intensive
algorithms. Some of these methods use Hough transform.
This transform is time consuming. Existing methods may
lead to false results when images are non-uniformly
illuminated or low contrast between iris and sclera part.
Another drawback in the existing approaches is that the
target boundaries are usually assumed as concentric and
circular contours, which are not true in majority cases.
Our proposed approach is simple but accurate so that it
can solve most of these problems. This method provides
some approximative information and then uses the circular
search and arc search for detecting pupil and iris,
respectively. Also the problem of non-uniformity of pupil
is solved choosing an optimum threshold value.
 The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes Where, I ( X , Y ) indicates graylevel value of original
proposed iris localization method. Section 3 includes iris image. Fig. 3 shows the output of system in this step.
normalization, iris pre-processing and feature extraction Finding an optimum threshold can efficiently solve the
steps. Experimental results are provided in section 4. The problem of pupil non-uniformity. For calculating of the
last section contains conclusions. pupil approximative radius, the area of pupil is used. The
area of pupil (S) is the number of the pixels which their
2. Iris localization value is equal to 255 in Fig. 3. Thus, the radius is obtained
For finding the centre and radius of pupil, two steps are according to:
considered: first, finding the approximative radius and S
centre and then circular search. R= (4)
2.1 Pupil localization
π
Where, R is the approximative radius of pupil.
2.1.1 Finding the Pupil Approximative Centre and Radius
Pupil is the darkest part of eye segments. Hence for
detecting the pupil, one can use a threshold value. In
general, the luminance of the pupil for all images is not
uniform. So, high threshold value may cause detecting
other segments in addition to the pupil. Also, low threshold
value may lead to missing some segments of pupil.
Therefore, we must select an optimum threshold value. The
MA algorithm [6] is applied to find approximative pupil
centre (Xpa,Ypa). In Fig. 1 the approximative pupil centre of
a typical image is shown. Then, two histograms for pixels
located at column Xpa and row Ypa are available, denoted in
two vectors of H1 and H2, respectively. The histogram H1 is Fig. 1: The initial approximative pupil centre (Xpa,Ypa)
shown in the Fig.2. Since the majority of the pixels inside
the pupil have graylevel intensities less than 50, we have
divided the histograms into 2 parts (as illustrated in Fig. 2
for H1).
Suppose histogram H1 as:
H 1 = [ x1 , x 2 ,..., xi ,..., x 255 ]
Where, xi indicates corresponding redundancy to the
intensity level of i. Also, H2 histogram can be described
with similar notation. To have an estimation of average
intensity level of pupil pixels, M1 and M2 are considered as: Fig. 2: The histogram for H1 direction. Green box shows pixels located
50 50

¦ ix i ¦ iy i
inside the pupil while red box specifies pixels located outside the pupil.

M1 = i =1
50
M2 = i =1
50
(1) 2.1.2 Finding the Pupil Accurate Centre and Radius
¦x
i =1
i ¦y
i =1
i
At first edge map of the image of ITH(X,Y) (the image
after thresholding) is obtained using Canny operator and
denoted by Iedge(X,Y). Suppose a circle, with centre of
Therefore the optimum threshold value TH is obtained (x0,y0) and radius of r0, as the real pupil circle. In the edge
as follows: map image, pixels have two states, on or off. It is obvious
M1 + M 2 that all pixels located on pupil boundary are "on" pixels.
TH = (2) Let the previously obtained approximative value to x0, y0
2 and r0, and define an "on" pixel search region by limiting
So, the total average intensity for pupil pixels can be the circle between two internal and external squares (as
estimated as TH. Thus, thresholding of iris image is shown in Fig. 4). Number of "on" pixels surrounded
performed according to: between the two squares must be maximized as a function
­255 I ( X , Y ) < TH of x0, y0 and r0. Using such a technique makes search
I TH ( X , Y ) = ® (3) region narrow and thus decreases searching time.
¯0 I ( X , Y ) ≥ TH Approximative centre and radius, calculated in the
previous subsection can be a good choice to start
searching. To speed up the algorithm, we must limit the
number of candidate points for pupil centre. So the search
is limited to a square of length 10 pixels. Also the
maximum variation of supposed radius is set to 10 pixels:
R − 10 ≤ r0 ≤ R + 10 (5)
These limitations (illustrated in Fig. 5) are determined
empirically.
Fig. 3: Sample result of thresholding
Fig. 4: Defining a search region to find "on" pixels
2.2 Iris localization
2.2.1 Finding the Iris Approximative Centre and Radius
Since the pupil centre is near to iris centre, the pupil
centre is assumed to be approximative iris centre. But for
computation of iris radius, another "on" pixel search
strategy is adopted. First, we introduce four points as start
pixels:
( X P − RP , YP ), ( X P + RP ,YP )
(X P − R p , YP − aRP ), (X P + R p , YP − aRP )
Where, a=0.3 and we consider the integer part of the
aRP in calculations. These 4 pixels are approximately on
pupil circle's perimeter. Then, scanning edge map of
original image in 4 directions (as shown in Fig. 6) is
performed to find "on" pixels. It must be noted that the
maximum search distance is limited to 60 pixels. By
scanning of image along with each direction, the distances
of "on" pixels from the start point are saved in a vector V.
Since we have four starting points, 4 vectors are obtained
namely: V1, V2, V3 and V4.
These vectors for a sample image are obtained as
follows:
V1= {22, 31, 56} V2= {30, 60}
V3= {6, 28, 51, 56} V4= {4, 27, 52, 58}
Approximative radius of iris must be extracted from
these vectors. One number from each vector must be
selected in a way that those 4 selected values have
minimum differences (be in the same range). For example,
considering the above mentioned vectors, the values 31,
30, 28 and 27 must be selected, respectively.
Approximative radius of iris let to be average of these
numbers. Therefore, the radius of iris is approximately 29.
Fig. 5: Defining a square search region around the approximative pupil
centre (Xpa,Ypa) to find real centre.
2.2.2 Finding the Iris Accurate Centre and Radius
Since some parts of the iris boundary is covered by
eyelashes and eyelids, finding the whole iris circle in edge
maps is impossible. So, we must search for those parts of
iris boundary that are often clearly detectable. We try to
detect two arcs (having 75 degrees width) as specified in
Fig. 7. To obtain the accurate iris radius and centre a
search strategy may be performed. Instead of searching the
whole iris circle, we search the arcs of iris circle in a
slimier way to the pupil circular search (See section 2.1).
Target arcs are illustrated in yellow in Fig. 7.
Fig. 8 shows a typical output of the proposed iris
localization method. This method successfully carried out
the problem of non-concentricity (distance between the
pupil centre and the iris centre in Fig. 8 is 3* 2 =4.24
pixel).

Fig. 6: A sample of CASIA database which has been edged. Four search
directions and the pupil centre are highlighted.
Fig. 7: Available arcs of iris circle
Fig. 8: A sample of localized iris
3. Feature Extraction
Before feature extraction, some pre-processing tasks
must be performed. Once the iris region is successfully
segmented from an eye image, the next stage is to
transform the iris region so that it has fixed dimensions in
order to allow comparisons [10]. Sources of dimensional
inconsistencies are pupil dilation caused by variant
illumination, varying imaging distance, head tilt, eye
rotation and so on. The normalization process will produce
iris regions, which have the same constant dimensions and
will remove the non-concentricity of the iris and the pupil
[11]. We used a modified version of Daugman's Cartesian
to polar transform as described in [11]. This transformation
(Daugman rubber sheet model) will project the iris disk to
a rectangular region with prefixed size (Fig. 9). The
following formulas perform the transformation:
I ( x (r ,θ ), y (r , θ )) → I (r ,θ )
x(r ,θ ) = (1 − r ) x p (θ ) + rxi (θ )
(6)
y (r ,θ ) = (1 − r ) y p (θ ) + ryi (θ )
x p (θ ) = x p 0 + rp cos(θ )
(7)
y p (θ ) = y p 0 + rp sin(θ )
xi (θ ) = xi 0 + ri cos(θ )
(8)
yi (θ ) = yi 0 + ri sin(θ )
Where, I(x,y) is the iris region, (x,y) and (r,ș) are
Cartesian and normalized polar coordinates respectively,
(xp,yp) and (xi,yi) are coordinates on pupil and limbus
boundaries along the ș direction, (xp0,yp0) and (xi0,yi0) are
the coordinates of pupil and iris centers. Result of iris
normalization on the image shown in Fig 8, can be seen in
Fig 10.a (ș=0:2ʌ). If we change range of ș as ș= ʌ/6:13ʌ/6
the result will be shifted (Fig. 10.b).
Fig. 9: The Daugman's Cartesian to polar transformation diagram
Fig. 10: The unwrapped iris image using Daugman's Cartesian to polar
transformation diagram
Size of unwrapped iris images is 91×524. The part of
iris image specified with green rectangle (closer to pupil
and not covered by eyelashes) provides most useful texture
information for recognition/indentification task. So, we
selected this part of each image (with size 60×341) for
feature extraction. Generally, researchers desire to design
an image enhancement step to increase the quality of input
images. To remove high frequency noises and also improve
the contrast of projected iris ribbon, histogram equalization
(HE) is used for the selected zone. A two-dimensional
adaptive Wiener noise-removal filter (a type of linear
filter) is applied to the HE image. This enhancement
strategy is adopted from [11].
2D discrete wavelet transform is widely used as a well-
known texture analysis technique, especially in iris
recognition [12,13]. In this paper, wavelet transforms;
especially Haar wavelet is used to extract iris texture
patterns in iris images. We applied wavelet transform 3-
times in order to get the 8×43 subimages. Indeed, after 3-
level wavelet decomposition, we used approximation
coefficients as required features (concatenated in a 344
element feature vector for each image).
Using the above mentioned technique, uniform feature
vectors for all samples in CASIA database are produced.
To evaluate accuracy and efficiency of the proposed
feature extraction method, a pattern recognition system
must be utilized. The next section includes such evaluation
process.
4. Experimental results
CASIA standard database is used to evaluate the
proposed method. An elaborative description of the
proposed iris recognition system including the pupil and
the iris localization, iris image normalization, iris image
enhancement and wavelet-based feature extraction is
provided through previous sections. To prove reliability of
the proposed method computer simulation results are
gathered in this section. CASIA iris database contains 756
iris image captured from 108 people (7 images per
individual, 3 images from right eye and 4 images from left
eye). We selected 2 images of each class for test set (third
and seventh images of each class, to have test images from
both right and left eyes). Indeed, about 30% of all images
are left for test procedure. A nearest neighbor classifier is
used for training and test procedure and recognition rate of
99.13% is obtained. In comparison with other wavelet-
based systems, our proposed system outperforms in both
respects of recognition rate and speed. The new accurate
and fast (having less computational burden) system is
mainly based on the high performance of iris localization
part.
5. Conclusions
The iris localization is the most important part of iris
biometric processing. If the location of iris can't be
extracted properly, the whole process of recognition and
especially feature extraction will be affected. In this paper
a new approach for the iris and the pupil localization is
presented. The problem of non-uniformity of pupil is
resolved through selecting an optimum threshold value.
Also the method fairly deals with non-concentricity
problem. Using circular search around the pupil
approximative centre and radius, limiting search regions
and low computational burden are manifest features of this
work. Our method has been evaluated on the CASIA
database. The simulation result shows that our proposed
method is highly efficient and accurate. Using a typical
feature extraction method and a simple classifier, the
proposed method resulted in the recognition rate of
99.13%. That shows the iris localization step is high
performance.
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