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Standoff passive video imaging at 350 GHz with 251 superconducting detectors

Published

Author(s)

Daniel T. Becker, James A. Beall, Hsiao-Mei Cho, Gene C. Hilton, Nicholas G. Paulter Jr., Carl D. Reintsema, Robert E. Schwall, Cale Gentry, Ilya Smirnov, Peter Ade, W D. Duncan, Mark Halpern, Carole Tucker

Abstract

Millimeter wavelength radiation holds promise for detection of security threats at a distance, including suicide bomb belts and maritime threats in poor weather. The high sensitivity of superconducting Transition Edge Sensor (TES) detectors makes them ideal for passive imaging of thermal signals at these wavelengths. We have built a 350 GHz video-rate imaging system using large-format arrays of feedhorn-coupled TES bolometers. The system operates at a standoff distance of 16 m to 28 m with a spatial resolution of 1.4 cm (at 17 m). It currently contains one 251-detector subarray, and will be expanded to contain four subarrays for a total of 1004 detectors. The system has been used to take video images which reveal the presence of weapons concealed beneath a shirt in an indoor setting. We present a summary of this work.
Citation
Proceedings of SPIE

Citation

Becker, D. , Beall, J. , Cho, H. , Hilton, G. , Paulter, N. , Reintsema, C. , Schwall, R. , Gentry, C. , Smirnov, I. , Ade, P. , Duncan, W. , Halpern, M. and Tucker, C. (2014), Standoff passive video imaging at 350 GHz with 251 superconducting detectors, Proceedings of SPIE (Accessed March 29, 2024)
Created June 20, 2014, Updated February 19, 2017