Airport securityNew training system improves airport screening efficiency, accuracy

Published 23 March 2017

Among the many tasks assigned to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Transportation Security Officers (TSOs), they must screen every bag boarding commercial aircraft within the United States. Visual search of X-ray images is a repetitive task for the approximately 50,000 screeners employed by TSA, with an often low probability of encountering a threat. TSOs are trained to use perceptual cues such as color, orientation and spatial location of individual items to identify potential threats and differentiate them from non-threat items in the X-ray images of scanned bags. DHS S&T’s Office for Public Safety Research (OPS-R) developed a training system that not only makes TSOs more efficient, but also maintains their accuracy.

Among the many tasks assigned to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Transportation Security Officers (TSOs), they must screen every bag boarding commercial aircraft within the United States.

The contents of bags are displayed on a screen as the scanned items pass through an X-ray machine. TSOs must identify threats, while minimizing unnecessary manual secondary bag searches that slow checkpoint throughput when they mistakenly flag a benign item. Interpreting X-ray images and understanding what threat and non-threat items look like in innumerable orientations is a daunting visual task.

Visual search of X-ray images is a repetitive task for the approximately 50,000 screeners employed by TSA, with an often low probability of encountering a threat. TSOs are trained to use perceptual cues such as color, orientation and spatial location of individual items to identify potential threats and differentiate them from non-threat items in the X-ray images of scanned bags.

The huge volume of items scanned every day must be cleared as quickly and efficiently as possible to facilitate air travel. However, missing a threat could be catastrophic. Lives depend on TSO accuracy. TSOs battle competing demands for safety and speed daily.

S&T says that the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s Office for Public Safety Research (OPS-R) developed a training system that not only makes TSOs more efficient, but also maintains their accuracy.

Existing training software is limited and uses only exposure training to elicit improvements in threat detection. Current training uses example after example until a TSO becomes more proficient. This training method is not adaptive to an individual’s needs, does not leverage the latest training methods or technology, and does not identify the root causes of a TSO’s deficiencies.

With these needs in mind, OPS-R sought to develop TSO training methods and tools that not only leveraged innovative emerging technology, but would also be relevant, challenging, intuitive and engaging. Enter ScreenADAPT, an advanced X-ray image analysis training system that examines TSO performance based on the latest in visual search research and uses eye-tracking technology to examine visual search performance.

ScreenADAPT has two main advantages over traditional training methods.