David J. Barton
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame are claiming the quality of iris scans can degrade slowly over time, R&D Magazine reports.
These new findings would bring into question the single enrollment for life concept, where the biometric marker remains stable throughout a person’s life.
Kevin Bowyer, Notre Dame’s Schubmel-Prein Family Chair in computer science and engineering, and undergraduate Sam Fenker experimented with a large database of iris scans over three years and compared the iris scans annually.
Bowyer said that, before the study, people believed that iris scans weren’t subjected to a template aging effect, which means that iris scans do not age.
He added that iris recognition is still an effective security system as long as companies recognize that there is a template effect.
Bowyer suggested that companies should set up a re-enrollment interval to update iris scan databases.
According to the magazine, iris recognition is used in airports such as those in London and Amsterdam, and border crossings such as one in the United Arab Emirates.
The FBI recently announced announced its plans to add iris scans into its criminal database.
