IRIS IMAGE SPECULAR QUALITY ARTIFACT EVALUATION FOR BIOMETRIC RECOGNITION KARAD SACHIN 1 , SANTOSH GHODAKE 2 , BHANUDAS YADAV 3 & SHAKTIKUMAR SHILEDAR 4 1 Assistant Professor, Instrumentation Engineering, Maharshi Parshuram College of Engineering, Velneshawar, Maharashtra, India 2 Senior Lecturer,Electronics Engineering Department,Government Polytechnic,Mumbai, Maharashtra, India 3 Head of Department,Medical Electronics Government Polytechnic Nanded, India 4 Incharge, Head of Department,Electrical Engineering,Government Polytechnic,Mumbai, Maharashtra,India ABSTRACT Image quality assessment plays an important role in the performance of biometric systems. Data quality assessment is a key issue, in order to broaden the applicability of iris biometrics to unconstrained imaging conditions. Having empirically observed the published strategies to assess iris image quality; In this paper, we propose quality factor after assessing the prominent factors of iris like Dilation, Light variation, Occlusion and Specular reflection by their scores. Mainly Concentrating on Specular quality artifact. These factors once evaluated are then used to get quality score for a given iris image from a database. As far as possible we have ensured that this paper will follow a common protocol in deciding those features. Not only in finding the feature from one database but can be implemented and quality score can be assessed for all possible freely available databases. Initial work has been carried out from the database created by our own set up (HUWITZ HS 5000).The comparison is also done with existing databases and algorithm. This in turn will act as a benchmark in increasing the efficiency of further processing. KEYWORDS: Biometrics, Image Quality Assessment, Iris Image Quality, Iris Recognition, Quality Metrics INTRODUCTION Security and the authentication of individuals is necessary for many different areas of our lives, with most people having to authenticate their identity on a daily basis; examples include ATMs, secure access to buildings, and international travel. Biometric identification provides a valid alternative to traditional authentication mechanisms such as ID cards and passwords, which overcoming many of the shortfalls of these methods; it is possible to identify an individual based on ―who they are" rather than what they possess" or ―what they remember. Iris recognition is a particular type of biometric system that can be used to reliably indentify a person by analyzing the patterns found in the iris. The iris is so reliable as a form of identification because of the uniqueness of its pattern. Although there is a genetic influence, particularly on the iris' colour, the iris develops through folding of the tissue membrane and then degeneration (to create the pupil opening) which results in a random and unique iris. In comparison to other visual recognition techniques, the iris has a great advantage in that there is huge variability of the pattern between individuals, meaning that large databases can be searched without finding any false matches. This means that irises can be used to identify individuals rather than just confirm their given identity; a property that would be useful in a situation such as border control, where it might be important not to just show that an individual is not who they say they are but also to show exactly who they are. The objective of this project is to produce a working prototype program that functions as an iris image quality assessment tool International Journal of Electronics, Communication & Instrumentation Engineering Research and Development (IJECIERD) ISSN 2249-684X Vol. 3, Issue 4, Oct 2013, 81-88 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.