Methods and apparatus for detecting objects in baggage
AssigneeL-3 Communications Security and Detection Systems, Inc.
InventorYaghoub Mahdavieh
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method of detecting a presence or absence of subject matter of interest, for example, sheet explosives and/or other potential threat objects is provided by various local and/or global gradient analysis methods including determining characteristics of gradient information of regions in an X-ray image to determine if the regions are associated with subject matter of interest for which detection may be desired, for example, contraband, explosives and/or other prohibited or unauthorized material.
Claims61
A method of detecting a presence or an absence of at least one sheet explosive in an article of baggage containing a plurality of non-threat items from at least one x-ray image of the article of baggage, the method comprising acts of:
- determining a gradient field for at least a portion of the at least one image, the gradient field including a vector quantity indicating a gradient direction and gradient magnitude at each location for at least the portion of the at least one image;
- determining at least one characteristic of the gradient field including determining principal directions of variation of the gradient field;
- performing at least one comparison of the principal directions of variation to determine whether the at least one characteristic is consistent with characteristics of sheet explosives;
- and
- determining whether the at least one sheet explosive is present amongst the plurality of non-threat objects based, at least in part, on the at least one comparison.
A method of detecting a presence or an absence of one or more sheet explosives in an article of baggage from at least one image of the article of baggage, the method comprising acts of:
- obtaining a gradient field of at least a portion of the at least one image, the gradient field including a vector quantity indicating a gradient direction and a gradient magnitude at each location for at least the portion of the at least one image;
- determining at least one characteristic of the gradient information indicative of a sheet explosive including determining principal directions of variation of the gradient information;
- and
- determining whether the portion of the at least one image includes at least part of a sheet explosive based on the at least one characteristic including performing at least one comparison of the principal directions of variation.
A computer readable medium encoded wit a program for execution on at least one processor, the program, when executed on the at least one processor, performing a method of detecting a presence or an absence of at least one sheet explosive in an article of baggage containing a plurality of non-threat objects from at least one x-ray image of the article of baggage, the method comprising acts of:
- obtaining a gradient field of at least a portion of the at least one image, the gradient field including a vector quantity indicating a gradient direction and gradient magnitude at each location for at least the portion of the at least one image;
- determining at least one characteristic of the gradient field including determining principal directions of variation of the gradient field;
- performing at least one comparison of the principal directions of variation to determine whether the at least one characteristic is consistent with characteristics of sheet explosives;
- and
- determining whether the at least one sheet explosive is present amongst the plurality of non-threat objects based, at least in part, on the at least one comparison.
An apparatus adapted to detect a presence or an absence of at least one sheet explosive in an article of baggage containing a plurality of non-threat objects from at least one x-ray image of the article of baggage, the apparatus comprising:
- at least one input adapted to receive the at least one image;
- and
- at least one controller, coupled to the at least one input, the at least one controller adapted to obtain a gradient field of at least a portion of the at least one image, the gradient field including a vector quantity indicating a gradient direction and gradient magnitude at each location for at least the portion of the at least one image, the at least one controller farther adapted to determine at least one characteristic of the gradient field including principal directions of variation of the gradient field, and to perform at least one comparison of the principal directions of variation to determine whether the at least one characteristic is consistent with sheet explosives to determine whether the at least one sheet explosive is present amongst the plurality of non-threat objects based, at least in part, on the at least one comparison.
A method of detecting a presence or an absence of one or more sheet explosives in an article of baggage from at least one image of the article of baggage, the method comprising acts of:
- obtaining gradient information of at least a portion of the at least one image;
- determining at least one characteristic of the gradient information indicative of a sheet explosive including determining principal directions of variation of the gradient information of the portion of the at least one image, wherein determining the principal directions includes determining eigenvectors representing the principal directions of variation of the gradient information, the predominant principal direction of variation corresponding to an eigenvector having a greatest magnitude;
- and
- determining whether the portion of the at least one image includes at least part of a sheet explosive based on the at least one characteristic including comparing the eigenvectors to determine whether the relative magnitudes associated with the eigenvectors is characteristic of sheet explosives.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.