PROCEEDINGS ARTICLE | August 25, 2006
Proc. SPIE. 6313, Advanced Signal Processing Algorithms, Architectures, and Implementations XVI
KEYWORDS: Point spread functions, Imaging systems, Cameras, Sensors, Image resolution, Iris recognition, Image registration, Image quality, Charge-coupled devices, Prototyping
We investigate the use of a novel multi-lens imaging system in the context of biometric identification, and more
specifically, for iris recognition. Multi-lenslet cameras offer a number of significant advantages over standard
single-lens camera systems, including thin form-factor and wide angle of view. By using appropriate lenslet spacing
relative to the detector pixel pitch, the resulting ensemble of images implicitly contains subject information
at higher spatial frequencies than those present in a single image. Additionally, a multi-lenslet approach enables
the use of observational diversity, including phase, polarization, neutral density, and wavelength diversities. For
example, post-processing multiple observations taken with differing neutral density filters yields an image having
an extended dynamic range. Our research group has developed several multi-lens camera prototypes for the
investigation of such diversities.
In this paper, we present techniques for computing a high-resolution reconstructed image from an ensemble of
low-resolution images containing sub-pixel level displacements. The quality of a reconstructed image is measured
by computing the Hamming distance between the Daugman<sup>4</sup> iris code of a conventional reference iris image,
and the iris code of a corresponding reconstructed image. We present numerical results concerning the effect of
noise and defocus blur in the reconstruction process using simulated data and report preliminary work on the
reconstruction of actual iris data obtained with our camera prototypes.
