Security scanner wins MacRobert Award
Technology that determines the chemical composition of materials in containers and behind other barriers has won Cobalt Light Systems the 2014 MacRobert Award.
The STFC spinout has developed a range of products capable of carrying out non-invasive sub-surface analysis. This includes Insight100, a spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) instrument that analyses bottles in order to determine if they contain an anomalous substance without having to open them.
In 2012 the scanner instrument exceeded the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) standard for use at airports with an almost perfect detection capability and negligible false-alarm rate in unopened containers.
The scanners have recently been deployed in eight EU airports including Heathrow and Gatwick, and a total of 65 airports in Europe have introduced the system since January 2014.
Cobalt is now working on an EPSRC-funded project with STFC and two UK universities that will determine if the same SORs technology could lead to medical-grade systems that provides on-the-spot diagnosis of breast cancer and bone diseases such as osteoporosis, a condition that affects roughly three million people in the UK and leads to bones becoming brittle and breaking easily.
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