About 1.3 million checked suitcases are inspected every day in the U.S., according to the Transportation Security Administration. A startup company in the Triangle is hoping to speed up the screening process with a new spin on old technology.
Like its product, the Quadridox office and lab in Hillsborough is a work in progress.
"We're kind of like in the midst of building and testing," said CEO Joel Greenberg. He earned a Ph.D. in Physics at Duke University and founded the company with the help of the university's Office of Translation and Commercialization.
The company started with a focus on medical imaging, but Greenberg said he and his colleagues realized the technology they were working with could be applied elsewhere.
"You can distinguish between different plastics, between different liquids, between different metals," he said.
The Quadridox scanner sits in the middle of a giant, open room. The outside of the machine is unremarkable. It looks like the kind of scanners you might have seen in airports or government buildings. The difference, Greenberg said, is what's going on inside.
Unlike traditional X-rays, which produce the shape or outline of an object, this machine uses X-ray diffraction, which scatters beams over the object.
"You're getting information about what each of the different materials are made out of, what their material is," Greenberg said.
The Transportation Security Administration estimates that its screeners open about 10% of checked baggage for secondary inspection. The agency is supposed to place a notice in the bag when that happens.
In 2023, TSA released a "Checked Baggage Maturation Roadmap" to reduce false alarms. It points to x-ray diffraction and artificial intelligence as possible solutions.
Greenberg said the Quadridox scanner has the potential to reduce or eliminate the need for physical inspections, because it can produce a more accurate image. The company is also working on a smaller scanner for passenger checkpoints, which could allow passengers to carry water bottles through the screening rather than emptying them out.
Quadridox shipped a prototype machine to a TSA lab in New Jersey in August. In November, researchers will run a test to see if the scanner can detect real explosives. After that, Greenberg said the company is hoping to conduct real-world tests at a to-be-determined airport.
"Being able to run our system in a real airport to demonstrate how we can reduce the false alarm rate and still maintain the throughput is an essential piece of having the technology kind of stamped as ready for deployment," he said.
