Biometric based authentication using wavelets and Visual Cryptography

Biometrics is the detailed measurements of the human body. Biometrics deals with automated methods of identifying a person or verifying the identity of a person based on physiological or behavioural characteristics. Protection of biometric data is gaining interest and digital watermarking techniques are used to protect the biometric data from either accidental or intentional attacks. Among the various biometrics, iris is very famous in the authentication area, as they are unique to each person and are mainly used for the establishment of instant personal identity. In this paper, a novel method using wavelet decomposition and Visual Cryptography is proposed to hide an iris image and it is embedded into a cover image. Results show that the proposed system can resist various attacks while maintaining the visual quality of the cover image.