Interferometric Terahertz Images for Detection of Lethal Agents

A non-invasive means to detect and characterize concealed lethal agents employs spatial imaging of their characteristic transmission or reflection wavelength spectrum in the Terahertz (THz) electro-magnetic range. Artificial neural network (NN) analyses of these THz spectral images provide specificity of agent detection at reduced false alarm rates. Published THz spectra are utilized to generate simulated interferometric images of bioagent contained within an envelope, and a suicide bomber. Both multilayer perceptron and radial basis function NN architectures are used to analyze these spectral images. Positive identifications are generally made, with radial basis function NNs generally yielding superior results.