Abstract
At airports, security officers (screeners) inspect X-ray images of passenger baggage in order to prevent threat items (bombs, guns, knives, etc.) from being brought onto an aircraft. Because threat items rarely occur, many airports use a threat-image-projection (TIP) system, which projects pre-recorded X-ray images of threat items onto some of the X-ray baggage images in order to improve the threat detection of screeners. TIP is regulatorily mandated in many countries and is also used to identify officers with insufficient threat-detection performance. However, TIP images sometimes look unrealistic because of artifacts and unrealistic scenarios, which could reduce the efficacy of TIP. Screeners rated a representative sample of TIP images regarding artifacts identified in a pre-study. We also evaluated whether specific image characteristics affect the occurrence rate of artifacts. 24% of the TIP images were rated to display artifacts and 26% to depict unrealistic scenarios, with 34% showing at least one of the two. With two-thirds of the TIP images having been perceived as realistic, we argue that TIP still serves its purpose, but artifacts and unrealistic scenarios should be reduced. Recommendations on how to improve the efficacy of TIP by considering image characteristics are provided.
Highlights
As an integral part of aviation security, passenger baggage and other consignments are screened using X-ray machines at airport-security checkpoints in order to prevent threat items from being brought onto an aircraft [1]
With two-thirds of the Threat image projection (TIP) images having been perceived as realistic, we argue that TIP still serves its purpose, but artifacts and unrealistic scenarios should be reduced
Participants were asked about six artifacts that could result from the improper merging of the fictional-threat images (FTIs) with the baggage image:
Summary
As an integral part of aviation security, passenger baggage and other consignments are screened using X-ray machines at airport-security checkpoints in order to prevent threat items (bombs, guns, knives, etc.) from being brought onto an aircraft [1]. The. X-ray images are inspected by airport-security officers (screeners), which involves a visual search and decision making [2]. X-ray images are inspected by airport-security officers (screeners), which involves a visual search and decision making [2] This task is challenging for various reasons [3–5], one of which being that the low prevalence of threat items in X-ray images results in lower detection due to a shift in response tendency [6–8]. Screener responses are recorded and summarized by calculating the proportion of detected TIP images (the hit rate). This hit rate is used to identify screeners with insufficient performance and trigger corrective actions. At many airports, based on EU regulation [16], screeners who miss a minimum
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