An iris and ocular recognition system using trace transforms

The use of trace transforms (e.g. fig. 1 A and 1B) in iris or ocular recognition systems and methods are disclosed. The system acquires (51) an eye image and may provide it to an image quality metrics determination module (53) for a quality evaluation to indicate whether the image goes to an iris recognition module (56) for high quality images or a trace transform module (57) for lower quality images. The trace transform may also be used as a pre-filtering mechanism to determine a small database from bigger datasets. If the quality evaluation is too poor, the image may be rejected subject to rehabilitation or reacquisition. A processed image from the iris recognition module (56) may result in an only best match, A processed image from the trace transform module (57) may instead result with a group of the most probable matches.