More US airports get 3D scanners to keep laptops in bag during checks

The US Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, is to purchase 300 ct machines for 3D screening of baggage that will be deployed from the summer. At baggage checks with such a ct machine, laptops can remain in the bag.

These are machines from the American company Smiths Detection that make scans based on computed tomography. The CT scans are X-ray scans from different angles, with which 3D views can be calculated. As a result, the TSA employees can study images of scanned bags from all sides during the baggage check, where they often still have to analyze 2D images based on X-ray scans for suspicious content.

One of the advantages is that laptops can stay in bags as a result. In the future, certain liquids could also be carried in bags again, so that restrictions in this area could be relaxed. The TSA expects that the waiting times and queues at the security checks will decrease as a result.

The TSA has been testing CT machines at two US airports since 2017, and last year the authority expanded the test to more than ten airports. The broad deployment will follow in the summer of this year and the three hundred new machines should be installed by 2020. Over the next eight years, the TSA expects to replace more than 2,000 machines with the new ct variants.

Schiphol has been testing machines for ct scans since 2016. The airport has since expanded the number of machines to all its 67 lines for baggage checks.