New People Screening X-ray System for Airports - Tadar

Smiths Detection, the world’s leading provider of x-ray and trace detection equipment, has unveiled its latest technological innovation for people screening applications called Tadar. The new passive millimetre-wave based equipment is an advanced system that will reveal multiple threat objects, such as weapons and illegal items, both metallic and non-metallic, even if a person conceals them by layers of clothing. Tadar represents a major advance on metal screening arches and wands.

The Tadar passive scanning approach uses the body’s natural, non-ionising millimetre-wave energy to sense threat objects with no risk to the person inspected. It rapidly scans people and sends reflected signals into a high-speed image processing computer which produces high-resolution images in real-time. These images benefit from development by Smiths Heimann engineers, world leaders in x-ray imaging technology.

Tadar is part of the comprehensive security checkpoint solution concept being developed by Smiths Detection and perfectly complements other current products of its product portfolio, offering the widest range of security systems today.

Tadar can be used in a variety of public areas, such as airports, court houses, federal buildings, prisons, embassies, schools, sporting events, mass transit systems and nuclear sites to minimize delays and the inconvenience of physical searches that are often necessary to resolve ambiguous alarms.

The Tadar is at pre-production prototype stage and is now undergoing extensive testing and customer evaluation. The machine is expected to enter full production early 2006 with airports worldwide already showing considerable interest in this exciting advance in aviation security.

Smiths Detection is one of four operating divisions of Smiths Group plc. Smiths Detection offers technologically advanced security solutions to detect and identify explosives, chemical & biological agents, weapons and contraband. Employing trace detection technology together with Smiths Heimann X-ray imaging, Smiths Detection provides screening solutions for customers in civil and military markets worldwide.