New training system improves airport screening efficiency, accuracy

First, the program has an eye-tracking capability. Right now, trainers and trainees do not have any objective measure of where they are looking on the screen, for how long and in what pattern. This can all be determined using ScreenADAPT. This critical information allows trainers and trainees to analyze why an error was made. It can now be determined if a threat was missed because a trainee did not look at that area of an image, or if they looked at that area and did not recognize the item was a threat.

Second, ScreenADAPT provides diagnostic metrics on TSO performance and automatically adapts to the trainee’s needs. ScreenADAPT dynamically addresses the trainee’s needs by varying the type of training, type of threats, level of bag clutter and difficulty. 

“You make this type of error, you get this type of corresponding training. If they are missing guns, they will see more guns; if they are missing IEDs they will see more IEDs,” said Darren Wilson, OPS-R’s ScreenADAPT program manager. “If a TSO makes a scanning error, they will get more exposure training. But if they make a recognition error, they will receive a different type of training to combat that, called discrimination training. The different types of training address the corresponding root causes of the errors and assist in building each TSO’s mental threat image library.”

The initial effectiveness evaluation indicated that using ScreenADAPT in initial training not only resulted in TSOs identifying threats faster, but also clearing bags faster. They were able to make faster decisions with more confidence.

Customization at the airport level is also a major advantage of ScreenADAPT. The items passengers pack in their bags in Portland, Oregon, at any given time of year can be very different than the items people pack in Orlando, Florida. ScreenADAPT allows individual airports to upload their own images that reflect the threat environment and items most often seen in that locality, as well as be responsive to emerging threats.

ScreenADAPT can be configured with a single or dual screens, and includes a small camera located just below each monitor to unobtrusively track eye movements.

The ScreenADAPT software calculates all of a TSO’s hits, misses and false alarms, and it can compare their performance metrics to those of their peers. The feedback ScreenADAPT produces helps improve all scanners’ performances.

“The whole premise is to maximize visual search performance,” said Wilson. “What this enables you to do is to train the core visual search skills necessary to efficiently and effectively conduct X-ray image analysis. Even if there are advancements in technology, it’s always going to come back to these basic visual search skills.”

TSA has recently deployed fifty ScreenADAPT systems for an even larger training effectiveness evaluation at airports in New York City, Pittsburgh, Portland (Oregon), Houston, Las Vegas and Raleigh. Some of these locations volunteered to be research airports, while others were chosen to vary the size of airports and types of passengers in data collection.

Initial data indicates that ScreenADAPT results in a 45 percent improvement in efficiency, with no loss in threat detection effectiveness.