ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Comput. Sci.
Sec. Computer Security
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Solutions for Safeguarding Intelligent SystemsView all 5 articles
Secure Authentication Using a Multidimensional Retinal Biometric Encryption Method
Provisionally accepted
- 1GIET University, Rayagada, India
- 2Odisha University of Technology and Research, Bhubaneswar, India
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The growing demand for robust information security has driven the development of cryptographic techniques leveraging unique biometric data, such as retinal patterns, for secure authentication. Traditional cryptographic methods often rely on single-key systems or multiple independent systems, which are vulnerable to brute-force attacks like Full-Space Key Guessing (FSKG) or incur high computational overhead. This paper proposes a novel cryptographic framework that generates three distinct keys—Retinal Diagonal Distance Metric (RDDM), Radial Origin-Terminus Distance (ROTD), and Diagonal-Radial Intersection Distance (DRID)—within a single system, derived from retinal vessel endpoints. Using MATLAB R2021b, retinal images are pre-processed, and features are extracted to compute Euclidean distances from vessel endpoints to specific reference points, forming the basis for key generation. Experimental results, extended to 7 retinal images for better generalizability, show that the proposed method significantly enhances security, with FSKG times for retina3 (105 vessels) reaching approximately 1.36 × 10142𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠, 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 3.4 × 10141 years for the baseline method using three separate single-key systems. For retina1 (27 vessels), retina2 (41 vessels), retina4 (56 vessels), retina5 (82 vessels), retina6 (94 vessels), and retina7 (112 vessels), FSKG times are 1.437 × 104𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠, 4.415 × 1025𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠, 2.18 × 1042𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠, 5.67 × 1078𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠, 3.92 × 1092𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 8.45 × 10110𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠, respectively, compared to baselines of 3.594 × 103, 1.104 × 1025, 5.45 × 1041, 1.42 × 1078, 9.8 × 1091, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 2.11 × 10110 years.The method produces unique cipher-texts for the same plain-text across different keys and retinas, with accurate decryption, demonstrating robustness and reliability. This work introduces a unified, biometric-based encryption system that enhances security and efficiency over traditional methods. The significant increase in FSKG resistance and the versatility of the approach suggest potential applications in other biometric domains, such as fingerprint encryption.
Keywords: cryptography, DRID, Key generation, RdDM, Retina Information, ROTD
Received: 18 Dec 2025; Accepted: 12 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Banu, rath and Gountia. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yashmin Banu
Dr. Debasis Gountia
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