This scanner knows what your pants are made of: 3D X-rays to search for bombs and drugs in luggage at airports
- Halo uses principle of crystallography to read each material's 'signature'
- It could allow more accurate security checks as terrorism fears soar
- Current scanners can only establish if an object is metal, plastic or organic
A new machine that uses 3D-imaging to reveal the exact material an object is made of could be used by airport security to rifle through luggage without opening it.
The Halo scanner uses funnel-shaped X-rays to detect the presence of bombs or other illicit materials in milliseconds by looking at their typical 'material signature.'
The technology could revolutionise security at airports by making it easier to spot weapons and explosives inside bags.
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Halo scanners exploit the principles of X-ray crystallography - a lab technique used to identify different materials according on how they scatters X-ray emissions. The typical way each material interact with radiations works as a 'material signature.' Halo machines shoot powerful tubular X-rays (the violet object in this graphic), which act as lenses and amplify every object's 'material signature'
It comes as airports around the world are boosting their security following the bomb attack on a Russian flight to Egypt by the terrorist group Isis.
The Halo technology was designed by a team of scientists from Nottingham Trent University and the Cranfield Forensic Institute at Cranfield University.
Their focus was improving the conventional X-ray scanners currently used in airports around the world.
These scanners - like medical ones - use X-rays to produce a picture of the objects inside the luggage.
However, they cannot provide an accurate picture of the material the items inside are made off. Instead they can only determine if something is metal, plastic or organic matter.
This proves ineffective when it comes to discriminating between - for instance - explosive and non-explosive metallic materials, or food and marijuana, which are both organic.
Such limitations cause several false alarms, and can even fail to detect threats.
During a US Transport Security Administration's drill early this year, airport security systems did not identify mock bombs and weapons in 95 per cent of tests.
As the fear about terror acts is soaring in the wake of the Paris attacks and of the alleged bombing of a Russian passenger jet in October, the Halo scanner might provide a solution.
The technology uses a technique long employed by biochemists in laboratories to determine the structure of biological molecules.
This relies upon the way in which different materials scatter X-rays when they hit them.
Different materials produce a unique 'signature' that can be used to identify what it is made of.
Laboratory devices using this method, though, are too slow to be used on a large scale.
Instead, Halo machines shoot powerful tubular X-rays, which act as lenses and amplify every object's 'material signature'.
'Our beam intersects the object, and concentrates the signal, so we can place various detectors inside the hollow beam, and see these unique patterns of diffracted radiation,' Halo's chief technology officer Paul Evans told The Engineer.
'Our aim is to ultimately produce a device that will not only produce signals, but also reconstruct three-dimensional images from these signals.'
The 3D reconstruction of the scattering patterns is then analysed by the machine's software, which taps into a library of thousands of 'material signatures.'
In an airport situation, it could then set off an alarm if dangerous materials are detected.
Current baggage scanners at airports (pictured) are only able to distinguish between metal, plastic and organic items. The new Halo scanner promises to reveal exactly what is in each bag
The whole process would take milliseconds, and would be fully automated - the current scanner prototype does not even have a screen-which should maybe worry airport security personnel.
'You could use it in a completely automated manner, which is the concept behind the current product,' Evans said in another interview with Smithsonian.com. 'You don't need humans.'
Halo scanners - whose development has been partly funded by the UK Home Office - are expected to be commercialised soon.
Besides security purposes, they could be used in other fields, like health or engineering.
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