Security check © james steidl - iStockphoto

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University of Manchester

For information Applied Mathematics at the University of Manchester

University of Manchester

For information on research facilities at The Alan Turing Building, the University of Manchester

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Fast-Scan Security

Mathematical Glue
Queuing, unpacking and repacking our suitcases is the price of Airport security. Suitcases go through an x-ray and any suspicious image means the luggage is sent on to a second machine, but a new 3D scanner may speed things up. It was the result of a collaboration between a global company, Rapiscan, and a team lead by Bill Lionheart, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Manchester University. The idea is that the bags could have a three dimensional scan and be viewed from any angle, enabling the security people to get a much better idea of the contents of a piece of luggage much faster. ‘They had invented it to make it very fast,’ says Professor Lionheart, ‘but they hadn’t thought about how to make the three dimensional picture. Because you are getting the view from lots of different directions, you have to piece it together to make a three dimensional volume. Then you can look at in any direction you like but some mathematics goes in between.’

Real Time
So Lionheart and his team created an algorithm which meant the operator of the scanner could see the object in 3D in real-time. The resulting machine, the RTT80 (Realtime Tomography) 3D scanner won a prestigious Engineer magazine award and has been tested in the US and in Germany with a view to being put into production if it meets the required standards. The mathematics they’ve used for the scanner is also a starting point for other applications. Rapiscan also make metal detectors which prompted Professor Lionheart to think that there are perhaps new ways of thinking about Anti-Personnel mines.

Airport security © Eliza Snow - iStockphoto
Landmines
‘It’s not a problem we have in the UK,’ says Lionheart, ‘but in the Far East and Africa, it will take hundreds of years to clear the mines. We are hoping that this metal detector project will lead to projects where we can clear up landmines much quicker.’ Lionheart believes that Mathematics is particularly good at working across different engineering problems. ‘You start looking at x-rays in airport security, then apply the same things to material science, inventing detectors, and you realise the same mathematics could be applied to land-mine detection. We tend to make bridges across different disciplines because the mathematics is shared.’

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