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; map the image of the iris as a unit disk starting at an inner boundary of the iris and stopping at an outer boundary of the iris; segment the unit disk as a function of a plurality of Gaussians centered at different locations in the local iris region, thereby generating a plurality of iris sub-regions; calculate a localized Zernike moment for each of the plurality of iris sub-regions to obtain a plurality of localized Zernike moments, each localized Zernike moment comprising a projection of the local iris region into a space of Zernike polynomial orthogonal basis functions; select the localized Zernike moments calculated for the iris sub-regions such that the iris sub-regions are not compromised by occlusion; generate a local iris texture feature set using the selected localized Zernike moments calculated for one or more iris sub-regions; classify the image of the iris as a function of the local iris texture feature set; and compare the classified image of the iris to a plurality of iris images in a database.