Sensing of scene-based occurrences is disclosed. In one example, a vision sensor system comprises (1) dedicated computer vision (CV) computation hardware configured to receive sensor data from at least one sensor array and capable of computing CV features using readings from multiple neighboring sensor pixels and (2) a first processing unit communicatively coupled with the dedicated CV computation hardware. The vision sensor system is configured to, in response to processing of the one or more computed CV features indicating a presence of one or more irises in a scene captured by the at least one sensor array, generate data in support of iris-related operations to be performed by a second processing unit and send the generated data to the second processing unit.