# Deep Learning for Iris Recognition: A Review

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.08514 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08514/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 58 of its 201 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Mar 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 58)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [A ConvNet for the 2020s](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03545/) (2022)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [Xception: Deep Learning with Depthwise Separable Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02357/) (2016)
- [Searching for MobileNetV3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02244/) (2019)
- [Photo-Realistic Single Image Super-Resolution Using a Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.04802/) (2016)
- [Knowledge Distillation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05525/) (2020)
- [SegNet: A Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architecture for Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.00561/) (2015)
- [YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08242/) (2016)
- [Swin Transformer V2: Scaling Up Capacity and Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09883/) (2021)
- [Image Super-Resolution Using Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1501.00092/) (2014)
- [EfficientNetV2: Smaller Models and Faster Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00298/) (2021)
- [SqueezeNet: AlexNet-level accuracy with 50x fewer parameters and <0.5MB model size](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07360/) (2016)
- [Dual Attention Network for Scene Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02983/) (2018)
- [Accurate Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.04587/) (2015)
- [MobileViT: Light-weight, General-purpose, and Mobile-friendly Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02178/) (2021)
- [Importance Estimation for Neural Network Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.10771/) (2019)
- [LeViT: a Vision Transformer in ConvNet's Clothing for Faster Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.01136/) (2021)
- [RefineNet: Multi-Path Refinement Networks for High-Resolution Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.06612/) (2016)
- [Learning Deconvolution Network for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04366/) (2015)
- [SA-UNet: Spatial Attention U-Net for Retinal Vessel Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.03696/) (2020)
- [Post-mortem Iris Recognition with Deep-Learning-based Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.01708/) (2019)
- [D-NetPAD: An Explainable and Interpretable Iris Presentation Attack Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01381/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Arabic Handwritten Text for Person Biometric Identification: A Deep Learning Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00409/) (2024)
- [VRBiom: A New Periocular Dataset for Biometric Applications of HMD](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02150/) (2024)
- [Iris Style Transfer: Enhancing Iris Recognition with Style Features and Privacy Preservation through Neural Style Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04707/) (2025)
- [MsMemoryGAN: A Multi-scale Memory GAN for Palm-vein Adversarial Purification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10694/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Iris recognition is a secure biometric technology known for its stability and privacy. With no two irises being identical and little change throughout a person's lifetime, iris recognition is considered more reliable and less susceptible to external factors than other biometric recognition methods. Unlike traditional machine learning-based iris recognition methods, deep learning technology does not rely on feature engineering and boasts excellent performance. This paper collects 120 relevant papers to summarize the development of iris recognition based on deep learning. We first introduce the background of iris recognition and the motivation and contribution of this survey. Then, we present the common datasets widely used in iris recognition. After that, we summarize the key tasks involved in the process of iris recognition based on deep learning technology, including identification, segmentation, presentation attack detection, and localization. Finally, we discuss the challenges and potential development of iris recognition. This review provides a comprehensive sight of the research of iris recognition based on deep learning.