"High-tech luggage scanner being tested at BWI Airport"

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

High-tech luggage scanner being tested at BWI Airport
By BRIAN WITTE
The Associated Press
 

LINTHICUM, Md. - A new high-tech scanning system for airplane luggage that
is designed to automatically detect explosives in carry-on bags while
speeding up the security process for passengers is being tested at
Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.

The scanner, which is called a COBRA Checkpoint Explosives and Weapons
Detection System, provides baggage inspectors with three-dimensional images
of items inside luggage.

While its primary mission is to increase screening capability, the new
system also could make the process speedier for passengers, who won't have
to take items such as laptops out of their bags.

"You just simply grab your boarding pass, take your shoes off and go
through," said Frank Vorwald, general manager and vice president of
Analogic, the Peabody, Mass.-based company that has been working on the
technology since shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks. "And that
means you don't have to put everything back together again, which makes it
easier to take your stuff and get through the system a lot faster."

COBRA is designed to improve on x-rays that currently provide only manual,
two-dimensional images of luggage.

"It's like a virtual tour of the bag," Vorwald said. "You can actively
rotate the object."

The images are shown in high-resolution color to aid inspectors.

"If it does alarm on explosives, it will be colorized very distinctly for
them to highlight, so it stands out at them," Vorwald said.

The COBRA, which doesn't look much different from current x-ray scanners for
carry-on bags, is similar to much larger scanners that are used for check
baggage. That equipment is about the size of a minivan.

The new machine has been at BWI since last week, and the Transportation
Security Administration will be testing it for several weeks. Another COBRA,
which costs about $350,000, is being used in Cleveland. TSA has purchased
about 12 of the machines from Analogic, and they will be used at other
airports soon, said Amy Kudwa, a spokeswoman for TSA.

"This gives us automated detection on a 3-D image," Kudwa said. "For
example, if there's an item in a bag that the security officer wants to look
at more closely, they can virtually unpack that on the image and then rotate
just that one image in 3-D and slice it up and look at it more closely."

Kudwa said the technology enables baggage inspectors to focus better on
anomalies in luggage, rather than on every single item in a bag.

The technology resembles whole-body CT scans used in medical environments.

Gabriel Balogh, who was traveling from Baltimore to Oakland today, said the
scanner "looks like MRI for your luggage."

"I'm glad that they're doing everything to make it easier and more
productive for all of us to be safe when we fly," Balogh said before passing
through the security.

Although the system's conveyer belt moves a little bit slow, the machine has
an automated return bin that runs underneath to make the process run
smoother.

The COBRA is one of several new technologies that TSA is using to improve
security at other airports. Other recent developments include bottle liquid
scanners and passenger imaging that takes images of what a person has in
their clothes.

"We've got a lot of different things that we're trying to create a suite of
technologies that really accomplish the goal of improving our detection
capability," Kudwa said.

Kudwa said that while the new machine requires some additional training for
inspectors, they have taken to it very easily.

"We have found the officers are very opened to it and have learned quickly,"
Kudwa said.

TSA also is testing a machine known as Fusion, which is produced by Bedford,
Mass.-based called Reveal Imaging, at an airport in Manchester, N.H.

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