<title>Comparison of active millimeter-wave and acoustic imaging for weapon detection</title>

Abstract

Millimeter-wave holographic imaging techniques have recently been developed for personnel surveillance applications at airports and other high-security checkpoints. Millimeter- wave imaging is useful for this application since millimeter-waves easily pass through common clothing materials yet are reflected from the human body and any items concealed by clothing. This allows a high-resolution imaging system to form an image revealing items concealed on the person imaged. A prototype imaging system developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory uses a scanned linear array of millimeter-wave antennas to capture wideband millimeter-wave data in approximately one second. This data is then mathematically reconstructed to form a high- resolution 3D image of the person being scanned. Millimeter- wave imaging has been demonstrated to be effective for detecting concealed weapons on personnel. Another imaging technique which could be applied to the weapon detection problem is acoustic imaging. Like millimeter-waves, ultrasonic acoustic waves can also penetrate clothing, and can be used to form relatively high-resolution images which can reveal concealed weapons on personnel. Acoustic imaging results have been obtained using wideband holographic imaging techniques nearly identical to the imaging techniques used for millimeter-wave imaging. Preliminary imaging results at 50 kHz indicate that acoustic imaging can be used to penetrate some types of common clothing materials. Hard clothing materials, such as leather on vinyl, are essentially opaque to acoustic waves at 50 kHz. In this paper, millimeter-wave and acoustic wave imaging techniques are compared for their effectiveness and suitability in weapon detection imaging systems. Experimental results from both imaging modalities are shown.