-Iris Recognition vs. Facial Recognition

Facial recognition technology has gained publicity to scan large crowds and populations. However, facial recognition is relatively easy to fool. Age, facial hair, surgery, head coverings, and masks all affect results. For this reason, it will most likely remain a surveillance tool instead of a starting line identifier, and will not be used for critical match applications such as border control or restricted access.

    Weaknesses of Facial Recognition

Although facial recognition has success to verification, lighting, age, glasses, hair and beard shape and face covering masks may change verification success rate. Lower success rate may occur for large populations. As a result, secondary possessing is required for surveillance operations. Also people do not know always their pictures is being taken and searched for database or picture may be taken without permission of the user.

  -Iris Recognition vs. Fingerprint

         Fingerprint technology has been widely accepted. Fingerprint readers are not ideally suited to handle the large variation of populations that need to be enrolled. “Outliers,” or those in the population that deviate from the average, can be a natural limit to enrollment or recognition. In large-scale deployments it takes many minutes, not seconds, to conduct a single search and a search may require ancillary data (such as age, sex, etc.) to partition the database for more speed. Further, multiple candidate matches may be returned. In a high volume, high speed environment, fingerprints do not have the accuracy, reliability or ability to handle large, diverse populations as is needed for critical transportation applications such as border control or restricted access. For these reasons, the best use of fingerprint technology within the transportation industry may be background checks.         

    Weakness of Fingerprint

Fingerprint is not accurate as iris recognition. False accepts rate may occur and is approximately 1 in 100,000. Iris recognition false accepts rate is 1 in 1.2 million statistically [12]. Most of the fingerprint systems measure approximately 40 – 60 characteristics but iris recognition looks about 240 characteristic to create eigenfaces. Iris recognition can perform matching in a high speed but fingerprint search take much longer and it may require filtering may give wrong identity matches. Most of the biometric systems required physical contact with scanner device and that needs to be kept clean and this is not hygiene issue. Iris recognition has a standard but on the other hand because of large number of different symmetry means no fingerprint standard. Fingerprint readability also may be affected by the work an individual does. For example, transportation workers such as mechanics, food workers, or maintenance workers may present fingerprints that are difficult to read due to dryness or the presence of foreign substances, such as oil or dirt, on fingers. Trauma or some disease on finger may change or damage finger details meaning that user may be needed scan his or her finger may times.

-Iris Recognition vs. Hand Geometry

         Hand Geometry is on of the first biometric verification system including access control, sale application, employee working time logs etc. Actually it is easy to use, also expensive, but needs large equipments which may limit the application. Hand geometry carries other challenges as well. Weather, temperature and medical conditions affect hand size. Hand size and geometry change greatly over time, which is especially obvious different in the very young and very old. It always needs upgrades for hand geometry. These challenges make hand geometry unsuitable for the high volume, large population applications of the transportation industry.

    Weakness of Hand Geometry

Hand geometry not matches with large databases. Whether and medical conditions such as pregnancy or certain medications can affect hand size. Hand size and geometry changes during the life cycle of people, especially in the very young and the very old. Most of the biometric systems required physical contact with scanner device and that needs to be kept clean and this is not hygiene issue. Big size of equipments may result difficulty in application. Expensive equipments are required.

-Strengths of Iris Recognition

         Iris recognition allow user to hands – free operation in application. Iris recognition has highest proven accuracy, had no false matches in over two million cross – comparison, according to Biometric Testing Final Report [12]. It allow high speed also for large populations, just look into a camera for a few seconds. The iris is stable for each individual through his or her life and do not change with age.