Comment by jandrewrogers
15 hours ago
Neither of those articles seem to support the idea that you can do molecular analysis with x-rays. They are all about elemental analysis, which is not useful for the purpose of detecting explosives.
15 hours ago
Neither of those articles seem to support the idea that you can do molecular analysis with x-rays. They are all about elemental analysis, which is not useful for the purpose of detecting explosives.
Not sure if they use dual-energy x-ray as in [0], but you don't need to if you take x-ray shot from different angles. Modern 3D reconstruction algorithms you can detect shape and volume of an object and estimate the material density through its absorption rate. A 100ml liquid explosive in a container will be distinguishable from water (or pepsi) by material density, which can be estimate from volume and absorption rate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-energy_X-ray_absorptiomet...
See also beepblap's comments further below where they elaborate on this a bit (it's not just simple dual-energy xray apparently).
Hm, isn't it enough to just detect water and flag everything else as suspicious?
If your liquid is 80%+ water (that covers all juices and soft drinks), it is not going to be an explosive, too much thermal ballast.