Rapiscan scans future of airport scanning with confidence

Computerized tomography (CT) scanning is widely used in medicine, but Rapiscan Systems, a division of Hawthorne, California-based OSI Systems, is applying the technology in high-speed airport baggage scanning. The company has just signed a $7 million contract with Manchester Airport Group in the United Kingdom for several units of the company’s new high-speed baggage-screening system, which are still being developed. In fact, the systems would not be available until 2008, but Rapiscan says the agreement — which includes a $1.7 million deposit — indicates that the company which made a name for itself for its backscatter weapon scanner is moving into the field of CT scanning. CT systems create three-dimensional images of objects passing through a tunnel. Rapiscan says this technology represents next-generation scanning.

Rapiscan’s system is a CT machine with a difference. Typical CT machines generate images with a part which rotates around the circumference of the tunnel. Rapiscan’s system creates the images electronically. The fact that the machine does not rely on a moving part dramatically improves throughput, and reduces false alarms and maintenance costs.

The company says the new machines can scan up to 1,500 bags per hour, nearly four-fold improvement over the more typical 400 bags per hour by existing machines. The reduction in maintenance costs would be even more dramatic, as the company says costs for maintenance would be 5 percent to 10 percent of current costs.

If the company plays its technology and marketing cards right, it is looking at a promising future: Scanning machines have a finite life time, and Rapiscan estimates that about 400 to 500 of the existing certified screening systems in U.S. airports will be eligible for replacement in the next three years. The remainder of the machines currently employed in U.S. airports will have to be replaced by 2011. Rapiscan is surely aware, though, that DHS Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has encouraged and partially funded several other programs to develop and test new and innovative weapons-screening technologies and explosive detection systems (EDS) for airports. These other companies are not going to yield without a fight.

-read more in this news release; see more about the company products at company Web site; see also Zack Phillips’s CQ report (sub. req.)