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New Wave of Body Scanners Coming Soon

02.24.2010

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Tulsa’s airport has been using full body scanner since Feb 2009, and Boston's Logan International Airport and Chicago's O'Hare International Airport are set to receive the first of 150 new whole-body imaging machines that will roll out nationwide this year. Logan will receive three machines, with one going to O'Hare. Both airports are due to receive the machines in the next few weeks.
Full-body scanners use different systems, but there are two main competing technologies: Backscatter x-ray and millimeter-wave. Both of these use radiation (of a non-harmful kind), that penetrates clothing.
In a baggage x-ray system, the device works pretty much like a medical x-ray, with rays penetrating through your bag to a sensor that's then connected to a screen--they use strong radiation, which is why they're plastered with those scary orange signs. Backscatter body scanners subject you to a far gentler burst of x-rays, and then detects those ones that are bounced back (scientifically: "backscattered") from your body, or objects on your person towards the machine. Concealed packets containing liquid bombs, drugs, or ceramic knives that would otherwise have passed through metal detectors undetected scatter the x-rays and are shown up.
Millimeter wave tech uses a similar system, with rays transmitted out to you and bounced back. But in this case technology borrowed from military radar designs allows for detailed "radar" images of your body to be created in a computer, and there's no use of the scary-sounding "x-ray" science. Detection of foreign, concealed objects on a body work the same.
As such, both systems are absolutely ideal for defeating the efforts of some knife-wielding would-be hijackers or bomb-laden terrorists.
O'Hare and Logan are such large airports that the implementation of one scanner, or even three, will have a negligible effect on most travelers. And the few passengers that do find themselves lined up for the body scanners can opt for a pat-down instead.
This group of 150 scanners is paid for by $25 million set aside in last year's stimulus plan. The proposed 2011 budget calls for 1,000 new body scanners at a cost of $734 million.