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Stopping the bombers at first blush

United States scientists have reported that they have developed a breakthrough in facial thermal imaging that could help spot would-be plane hijackers and bombers at an airport check-in counter.

The technique, published in the British science weekly Nature, detects minute changes in temperature in the skin around the eyes. This area literally blushes when someone tells a lie, but the change can be invisible to the observer.

Researchers led by James Levine of the Mayo Clinic's endocrine research unit in Minnesota asked eight volunteers to commit a fake crime in which they stabbed a dummy and robbed it of 20 dollars and then asserted their innocence.

Twelve other volunteers did not carry out the mock deed, but underwent the same questioning about the crime. Using high-definition thermal imaging cameras, Levine correctly spotted six out of the eight 'guilty' volunteers and identified 11 out of the 12 'innocent' ones.

Levine says the technique could be a godsend for crowded places such as airports, where security has to be thorough but where time is short. "There is an urgent need to devise technologies that can be used for automated, high-throughput screening to identify individuals intending to perform acts of terrorism," his team writes.

The researchers say the idea came from a previous discovery that when someone hears a startling noise, the blood rushes to the skin around the eyes, providing a specific facial 'thermal signature'. The blushing is believed to be triggered by the sympathetic nervous system in the fight-or-flight response that is part of man's inherited capacity for survival. Levine's theory is that the same response is triggered by lying.

Source: IOL

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