New X-Ray Technologies for Air-Cargo Security

June 9 2008 | 0 comment(s)

We are all (way too) familiar with the airport screening of accompanied luggage, but this is only a minor fraction of what aircrafts carry. The rest consists of commercial freight, which is more difficult to scan, as the Economist reported:

"Part of the reason is that when an X-ray machine is faced with a
containerful of cargo, the image it produces may be confused by the large
number of objects packed inside. In addition, X-rays are poor at
distinguishing between objects of identical shape but different composition.
That is particularly true if the objects are made of material with a low
density-as both explosives and drugs are. Moreover, something hidden in a
container that is opaque to X-rays will not be noticed at all."

As reported, Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Nuctech, a high-tech company originating from Tsinghua University in China, aim to improve the situation by combining traditional X-ray scanning with a second scan using neutrons. Their rationale is that by combining the two techniques the results should be
better at spotting threats than X-rays are alone.

Another emerging technology that tackles this problem is Southern-Innovation, an Australian startup who were selected to be amongst the top-5 Asian Security Startups in 2007, by the annual Global Security Challenge competition. Southern Innovation's technology resolves the problem of pulse pile-up by decoding, rather than discarding, the data discarded by existing radiation detection systems.

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The Economy Hits Venture Capital: Latest trends show no growth	July 28 2008
Imperial College London sets up new "Institute for Security Science & Technology"	July 25 2008
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New Security Association in the UK: SITC	June 26 2008
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The DHS Inspector General Takes a Look at Airport Security	March 31 2008
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GSC open-ed article in Biometric Technology Today: "Taking Innovation to Market"	August 4 2008

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New X-Ray Technologies for Air-Cargo Security

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