Although only a couple of years back iris identification systems were something people saw mostly in Sci-Fi or James Bond movies, things have changed quite a lot these days, as the rapid evolution of technology over the past few years led to several important developments in this specific technological field. However, it would seem that the people over at Panasonic might overhaul this whole concept, as they are reportedly working on a very advanced biometrics system that will allow users to have their iris scanned while simply walking through a doorway, for example.

Thus, according to an article published by Lili Mine for TechOn, the online version of the Asian Nikkei Electronics magazine, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd.'s Panasonic System Solutions Company (well, that's a hell of a long name) has developed what they call the "Walkthrough Iris Identification System", a biometric authentication system that works very well even if the person whose iris must be scanned is walking.

The new system uses multiple 2-Megapixel cameras for monitoring the iris, but also a special "eye position sensing technology", which computes correlation value between the input image and a template image it creates in light of gradation data of the eye area. After this value has been computed, it is compared to the values stored in a database filled with templates and provides the best possible match.

Moreover, according to the article in Nikkey Electronics, this whole process takes less than 2 seconds to complete. This is possible due to the fact that the system developed by Panasonic isolates only the eyes from the high-resolution images taken by the cameras, thus greatly reducing the processing times and the processing loads.

Another interesting fact about Panasonic's new biometric system is that it can be very easily setup just about anywhere, since it measures just around 32 x 220 x 74 cm and it even comes packed with its own lighting system. Although there's no info regarding the moment when these things will actually become available for mass installation, they will most certainly enjoy quite a high level of success, since they'll be able to seriously reduce the access times to a certain location.

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