A rapid and accurate iris location algorithm is proposed to increase the location speed and ensure the accuracy and robustness. Firstly,the approximate center of a pupil is got by the gray projection and the detection operator of the center of pupil,and then four inner boundary points that are not on the same line are found by the voting method and the direction edge detection operator beginning from the approximate center,and the inner boundary of the iris is located on rapidly based on the four points. Finally,four outer boundary points that are not on the same line are found by the voting method and the direction edge detection operator beginning from the accurate center of the inner boundary of the iris and the outer boundary of the iris is located. Many experiments indicate that this algorithm is much faster than any other existing method. What is more,the accuracy of the location and the robustness of the algorithm are ensured.