With air safety concerns soaring all over the world, iris recognition tests are turning up at several airports in North America and Europe. In one recent implementation, British Airways (BA) and Virgin Atlantic tested a system from EyeTicket Corp. at Heathrow Airport in London, JFK in New York City, and Dulles outside Washington.

EyeTicket's JetStream Travel Manager service uses digital biometric identifiers instead of paper passports to help governments decide who can cross national borders. JetStream underwent testing at BA and Virgin Atlantic terminals on both sides of the Atlantic last year. However, iris scanning still needs approval from the U.K.'s Home Office before settling into that country completely.

“We're involved in a project to introduce biometric technology. The U.K. Immigration Service (UKS) wants to see whether iris scanning can help cut down on lines when people arrive at the airport,” says Chris Hurrey, Her Majesty's Inspector in the U.K.'s IS Border Control Modernisation Programme.

Launched in January 2002, the six-month test was arranged by the Simplifying Passenger Travel Project (SPT) of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The project's U.K. Regional Group includes the UKS, the British Airport Authority (BAA), BA, Virgin Atlantic, and EyeTicket, along with a few other technology suppliers.

The two British airlines chose initial participants at Heathrow, JFK, and Dulles from among their own frequent flier programs, focusing on passengers who make frequent trips between the United States and the U.K.

“We used people who'd already been assessed as ‘low risk’ in applying for long-term visas or alien resident status, for example. People initially registered via e-mail. We put them into our database, interviewed them, and looked at their passports to see whether risk assessments had been done on them,” Hurrey recalls.

Meanwhile, in a two-month trial held later last year, the U.K. Passport Office used a smart card system from SchlumbergerSema to help gauge reaction to iris recognition among the U.K.'s general public. About 500 “passport smartcards” were made.

The Schlumberger trial took place as part of the Home Office's entitlement card consultation process. Under this process, the U.K. is “examining the feasibility of developing a high-quality common population register, holding core data and a unique identifier on U.K. residents that could be used across the public sector,” according to the U.K. government's consultation document.

In total contrast, during the immigration tests at the U.K. and U.S. airports, EyeTicket took pains to keep all biometric data separate from other passenger information held by the Immigration Service and the airlines.

The U.K. government is now looking at fingerprint and facial recognition as alternatives in the biometric arena. “We're working through the business case. We need to see whether the ‘costs vs. risks’ make good business sense,” Hurrey says.

If the U.K. ultimately decides on full-scale biometric deployment, the Home Office is expected to issue a formal request for proposal, or RFP.

In the test of EyeTicket's JetStream, key components included iris scanning enrollment stations, situated at Heathrow, JFK and Dulles; a recognition station, housed at Heathrow; and specialized black-and-white video cameras, running at 30 frames-per-second.

The passenger needed to enroll in JetStream only once. At the enrollment station, a camera took a close-up digital image of the iris. The image was then stored as a template in a 512-byte computer file. When passengers got to the recognition station at Heathrow, they took a glance at another camera. JetStream then looked for matches between the live picture and stored image.

“If a passenger is able to pass through the recognition system, a ticket is printed and a barrier opens. If the recognition system won't let you through, however, you have no option but to stand in the immigration line,” Hurrey says.

About 900 people enrolled in the “automatic immigration control” test.

During the trial, 10 participants each entered the U.K. through JetStream seven more times. According to the U.K. Regional Group, it took participants about 12 seconds, on average, to be admitted by the Immigration Service.

But challenges with the underlying network pushed back the live testing says Hurrey. “What was more time consuming, was working through all the protocols and procedures for risk assessment and enrollment,” he says.

The JetStream kiosks use software algorithms first created by Jeffrey Daugman, PhD., originally of Harvard University and now a professor at Cambridge University in the U.K. Patents for the Daugman algorithms are owned by Iridian Technologies, but are also licensed to outside developers and systems integrators.

Iris recognition software based on Daugman's algorithms has been deployed at airports in North Carolina; Canada; Frankfurt, Germany; and Schiphol, the Netherlands.

Another service from EyeTicket, known as EyePass, has been used for employee access control at North Carolina's Charlotte/Douglas International Airport.

The ET-4000, a new iris recognition camera from EyeTicket, uses a 165×240×125mm footprint, and is designed to integrate with a range of kiosks, including JetStream and EyePass.

Meanwhile, members of the IATA's SPT Regional Group have expressed public satisfaction over results of the EyeTicket test. “Initial findings from the six-month expedited arrivals trial at Heathrow using the JetStream iris recognition system offer an encouraging outlook for the use of such technology,” according to a joint statement issued last August.

Members claimed success at meeting a wide range of goals, including simplifying and speeding up the arrivals process; positively identifying passengers; attaining positive feedback from passengers; maintaining border integrity; and proving that enrollment can be achieved remotely — at JFK and Dulles, specifically.

However experts do cite certain disadvantages for iris recognition, as opposed to other biometrics. Some individuals, for example, tend to “feel invaded” by iris scanning. For cultural reasons, acceptance could come easier in the United States than in Europe, especially in light of the Sept. 11 tragedy.

Moreover, Hurrey readily admits that, in dollars-and-cents terms, iris recognition is generally more expensive than fingerprint scanning or hand recognition.

As Hurrey sees it, though, iris recognition is a strong contender for deployment at U.K. airports. “Prices are falling — and we're not basing our decision solely on financial costs, anyway,” he says.

Hurrey also points out that, unlike fingerprint scanning, iris recognition doesn't require smart cards. “We wouldn't need to replace lost cards — and immigration staff wouldn't have to be doing card management.”

Iris recognition is also fast and accurate, Hurrey contends. “You can typically get a response in less than a second. The accuracy is good with small to mid-sized databases. Unfortunately, we don't have any experience with large databases. We think, though, that the system can be made scalable enough to recognize maybe millions of people.”

According to Daugman, iris scanning is the most accurate of all the biometric technologies, thanks to the “complexity and randomness” of the human iris. The iris's mesh-like texture contains vast numbers of ligaments which form uniquely identifiable patterns. In fact, no two irises are exactly alike. Daugman's algorithms use 260 possible points of reference, or “degrees of freedom,” for image matching.

“If faces were that unique, one person might have three noses, and the next might have three eyes and three mouths,” the professor quips. In comparison, fingerprints use only 60 to 70 points of reference.

As the U.K. government weighs pros and cons, another factor likely to come into play is standardization, on both the technical and procedural fronts. The IATA — a consortium of iris recognition vendors and customers — is now at work on a set of standards for iris scanning. “To my knowledge, there is no such standardization effort in place for either fingerprint scanning or facial recognition,” Hurrey says.

Just as importantly, perhaps, Hurrey perceives a strong need for “procedural” consistency across national borders. “If we in the U.K. decide to let certain people enroll, should the Dutch, for example, use the same list?” Hurrey asks. “Do the Dutch trust our procedures? And do we trust theirs?”