Liquid contents verification for explosives, chemical agents, and dissolved narcotics

摘要

An increasingly important need today is to guard against terrorist attacks at key locations such as airports and public buildings. Liquid explosives can avoid detection at security checkpoints by being concealed as beverages or other bengin liquids. Magnetic resonance (MR) offers a safe, non-invasive technology for probing and classifying the liquid contents inside sealed non-metallic containers or packages. Quantum Magnetics has developed a Liquid Explosives Screening System or "Bottle Scanner" to screen for liquid explosives and flammables, described at an earlier SPIE conference in 1996. Since then, the Bottle Scanner's performance has been significantly improved by the incorporation of neural network-based liquid classification. Recently we have shown that the incorporation of additional discrimination parameters can further enhance liquid classification. In addition to screening for explosives and flammables, the Bottle Scanner can be effective against chemical agnets, many of which contain fluorine or phosphorous, both of which have MR signatures. Finally, we have evidence that the Bottle Scanner may also be able to detect narcotics dissolved in beverages, one of the methods used to smuggle narcotics across international borders. The development of the Bottle Scanner has been funded by the Federal Aviation Administration.