VietNamNet Bridge - A research work by two Vietnamese university students on iris biometrics has been recognized by the Journal of KIIT, a prestigious scientific publication, which is heartening news for the Vietnamese community of young scientists.

In Vietnam, iris biometrics technology remains unfamiliar to people. However, Nguyen Hai Duong and Ung Quang Huy, the two young scientists, believe that the technology is a growing trend for security solutions in modern times. They have devoted themselves to research on the matter.

Citibank has utilized iris biometric technology for its ATM cards, while Fujitsu and Microsoft have used the technology for smartphones instead of PIN codes. 

The bad news is that password, PIN codes and fingerprint biometrics cannot ensure absolute security. Most recently, a research team from University of Michigan and Vkansee announced they could forge fingerprints to unlock iPhones. 

A research work by two Vietnamese university students on iris biometrics has been recognized by the Journal of KIIT, which is heartening news for the Vietnamese community of young scientists.

In early 2014, under the guidance of Dr Pham The Bao from the HCM City University of Natural Sciences, the students cooperated with IriTech Inc, one of South Korean iris security firms, to conduct a research work on upgrading safety for iris biometrics systems.

When implementing the project on authenticating real-time iris eye movements on iris scanning device, the young scientists used artificial intelligence to create a system which improves the safety for iris biometrics. 

The system can implement the task automatically without people’s intervention.

When receiving image, the system detects the position of the eye in the image and checks to find if the eye is real or counterfeit.

Real eye image is taken directly from people’s eyes, while counterfeit eye image is the image from a copied eye image. 

The project also aimed to discover the action of counterfeiting eye images (taking pictures of someone’s eyes, printing the images on paper and using it to unlock devices; or taking pictures of their own eyes, printing the images on paper and asking someone to present the paper for timekeeping at the office).

Duong said iris biometric is a new scientific field and still has not been used widely in the world. Thus the team of researchers encountered difficulties in their work.

He said they can discover eye image counterfeiting with a high degree of accuracy of 95 percent. This is just part of their research work and was published in the Journal of KIIT in September 2014. The reports on other achievements will be sent to an international scientific journal.

Kham Pha