System and method for weapon detection

A system for detecting weapons inside a surveillance area, the system comprising:

• at least one security post comprising at least one magnetometer configured to capture magnetic disruptions along at least one of an x, y, z axis in the surveillance area and produce an analogue signal;
• at least one Analogue-to-Digital Converter (ADC), each connected to the at least one magnetometer and configured for digitizing the analogue signal produced by each of the at least one magnetometer;
• at least one magnetometer pre-processor connected to the at least one ADC and configured for filtering, conditioning and pre-processing digitized signals produced by the at least one ADC;
• at least one video camera each configured to capture a video stream from the surveillance area;
• at least one image processor connected to the at least one video camera and configured for processing the video streams from the at least one camera;
• an orchestrator processor connected to the at least one magnetometer pre-processor and the at least one image processor and configured for timestamping and combining the pre-processed digitized signals from the at least one magnetometer pre-processor and the processed video streams from the at least one image processor;
• a dipole modelling processor connected to the orchestrator processor and configured for processing the timestamped signals from the orchestrator processor with at least one modelling algorithm, and outputting at least one set of solutions;
• a solution evaluation processor connected to the dipole modelling processor and configured for running in parallel a plurality of algorithms for evaluating the at least one set of solutions, each containing a possible identification of ferromagnetic objects and signals that are deemed potential weapons;
• and
• a final solution evaluation processor connected to the solution evaluation processor and configured for using a metric for selecting a final solution containing a most probable identification of potential concealed weapons, and for creating an alarm signal if a potential weapon has been detected.

A method for detecting weapons inside a surveillance area, the method comprising:

• measuring an ambient magnetic field strength, identifying magnetic disruptions with at least one magnetometer, and producing at least one analogue magnetic signal;
• digitizing the at least one analogue magnetic signal with an ADC;
• pre-processing the at least one digitized magnetic signal with the magnetometer pre-processor to produce pre-processed magnetic signals;
• recording at least one live video stream of the surveillance area with at least one video camera;
• processing the at least one live video stream for detecting human faces, bodies and objects with at least one image processor;
• timestamping and combining the at least one pre-processed magnetic signal and the at least one processed video stream with an orchestrator processor;
• defining with a magnetic dipole modelling processor an optimization problem for identifying magnetic dipoles, and outputting at least one set of solutions, using a solution evaluation processor connected to the dipole modelling processor for running in parallel a plurality of algorithms for evaluating the at least one set of solutions, each containing a possible identification of ferromagnetic objects and signals that are deemed potential weapons;
• and
• binning and statistically evaluating the at least one solution of the optimization problem, and selecting and exporting an optimal solution that has the highest frequency of occurrence using a final solution evaluation processor.