1. A system comprising: a computer processor and computer storage device configured to: receive an image of an iris; segment the image of the iris, thereby creating a local iris region; calculate a localized Zernike moment for a plurality of regions of the image, the localized Zernike moment comprising a projection of the local iris region into a space of Zernike polynomial orthogonal basis functions; generate an iris feature set from each of the localized Zernike moments; classify the image of the iris as a function of the iris feature set; and compare the classified image of the iris to a plurality of iris images in a database.