History of Computers - Retinal Scanning
Created By: Gregory Dayao
Introduction
Retinal Scanning is one of the major biometric scanning technologies, mainly used for identification purposes. Other popular means of biometric scanning technologies are finger, facial and voice. In the 1980s, retinal scanning technologies have become popular for means of identification because of the low fail rate, inability to fake, and the low susceptibility to intentional or unintentional modification.
Overview
The idea of retinal scanning was first conceived in 1935, as doctors discovered that unique patterns of blood vessels in the back of they eyes of every person. Later in 1981, Robert Hill launched his recent patented commercial model of a retinal scanner.
A retina scanner will shine low intensity, low energy infrared light through the pupil to the back of the eye. The blood vessels at the back of the eye will easily absorb the light, illuminating a unique pattern of blood vessels for the scanner to read. This use of biometrics is highly accurate with a .00001% fail rate. [1] Also, this is the ideal method of identification for high-level security since the unique patter of blood vessels at the back of the eye cannot be faked, the retina of a deceased person decays too quickly to scan, and there is a low susceptibility to intentional or unintentional modification of the retina. One key disadvantage of retina scanning is that image acquisition when entering into the database requires many scan attempts, which can cause user discomfort. The one-to-many identification when matching a scan to the multitude of scans in the database typically requires many attempts to qualify the image taken. [2]
Significance
Retinal scanning was obviously a step up of manual identification of fingerprints and rough sketches of faces previously used before this technology. Despite its the thorough process of authentication, the retina scanner proves to be one of the most reliable and secure methods of biometric security.
Cites
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRzepw4uhgM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinal_scan
http://www.fleminc.com/newsblog/5/how-does-retinal-scanning-work
