1. A computer readable storage medium comprising a computer readable program for generating compact iris representations based on a database of iris images, wherein the computer readable program when executed on a computer causes the computer to perform the steps of: computing genuine and imposter score distributions for full-length iris codes for iris images in a database, where the full-length iris codes include a plurality of portions corresponding to circumferential rings in an associated iris image; identifying and retaining code portions that have a contribution that provides separation between imposter and genuine distributions relative to a threshold; measuring a correlation between remaining code portions; and generating a subset of the remaining code portions having low correlations within the subset to produce a compact iris representation.