A combined Pulling & pushing and Active Contour method for pupil segmentation

Pupil segmentation is usually the first step used for searching iris regions. Iris localization is an extremely important procedure in iris biometrics systems, since the correct segmentation of inner and outer boundaries is critical to achieve high recognition rates. An iris localization method based on a spring force-driven iterative scheme, called Pulling & Pushing have been proposed by He et al. 2006. Here, we propose a pupil segmentation procedure that combines Pulling & Pushing and Active Contour Models, overcoming and improving the results of the previous method. We also developed a new strategy to identify and fill reflection points that appear inside the pupil. We tested our method in MMU1 and Casia V1 and V3 iris databases, obtaining accurate results.