Blood-vessel biometricsStartup developing eye blood vessel biometrics

Smartphone users could soon be using the whites of their eyes as their passwords. EyeVerify, a Kansas City-based startup, has developedeye biometrics that use a smartphone’s camera to analyze a user’s blood vessels around their irises.

“We’ve launched EyeVerify with the mission of answering the question of ‘Who’s holding the phone’” Toby Rush, the CEO of EyeVerify, said in an interview with Silicon Prairie News. “We are going to be creating a software authentication module that can run on cell phones that can use the existing camera on cell phones – so this is a pure software play – to take pictures of the whites of the eye, specifically the blood vessels, match those and verify, you know, the user is who the user says they are.”

Rush believes eye blood vessel biometrics are the best approach for smartphones as it does not require any additional hardware like fingerprint or retina scanners. In addition, Rush considers facial recognition software “gimmicky,” while voice recognition software is susceptible to environmental issues like background noise and sore throats.

According to Rush, with eye blood vessel biometrics all that is required is a standard smartphone camera, which generally has at least two to three megapixels,  and good lighting and focus to read the unique pattern around an individual’s eye.