RTT80 Baggage Scanner

The issue of airport security is never far from the headlines. Airline passengers are getting used to ever-increasing layers of searches and X-rays of themselves and their hand luggage. But the security systems that study our baggage once it’s checked in are hidden from our eyes.

Basically, suitcases and large bags go through bigger versions of the X-ray systems we’re familiar with from the security queue. If something suspicious shows up, however, the bag can be taken to a second line of security — a computerised tomography (CT) scanner, similar to those used in hospitals, which provides a cross-sectional image of the bag to investigate the threat. This double-layered security system is slow and requires extra operators, but is seen to be justified by the extra reassurance that nothing harmful is getting on the plane.

One way to speed up this system would be to pass all baggage through a CT scanner, but conventional systems are just too slow. However, airport security specialist Rapiscan has redesigned the CT machine to come up with a device, currently under trial, that could replace the double-layer system with a single CT scan in the same scanning time of the current first line of X-ray machines.