ALERT | Awareness and Localization of Explosive-Related Threats

The focus of this thrust is to develop the basic science to enable successful design and implementation of explosive detection and identification systems using multisensor systems and unconventional approaches including alternative signatures such as behavioral and motion cues. Of particular interest are hybrid systems that use multiple modalities that combine information about diverse and complementary properties of explosives, plus information about human factors. Measurable properties provided by the suite of sensors include x-ray absorption or backscatter characteristics at different energies, emission measurements in multiple spectral bands, geometric shape, nuclear composition, thermal and visual imagery as well as unconventional signatures like video motion patterns and anomalous behavior of suspected individuals. The basic science will focus on methodologies for selecting appropriate combinations of sensors, extracting critical features from each sensor, fusing the information across sensors for optimal detection and identification of threats, and actively controlling the sensing and processing of information to improve the sensitivity and specificity of explosive detection systems.

We plan to consider both portal and stand-off-detection systems, motivated by difficult explosives detection problems such as the detection of suicide bombers and vehicle-mounted and hand-carried IEDs. Portal detection systems offer the potential for controlled sensing environments and simultaneous acquisition of multisensor data with reduced clutter ambiguity. In contrast, stand-off detection systems work with weak signals in uncontrolled backgrounds, where simultaneous multisensor measurements and controlled sensing geometries are difficult to achieve. Stand-off multisensor systems will be based on networks of heterogeneous sensors fusing information collected over space and time. Our goal is to develop technology for systems that can scale to realistic throughputs, and hence will operate with significant amounts of autonomy, involving human operators primarily for critical decision tasks.

Project Leaders

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Faculty and Staff

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Students

Search Publications

• Behavior Subtraction P. M. Jodoin, V. Saligrama, J. Konrad IEEE Trans. on Image Processing 2012.
• Video Anomaly Detection Based on Local Statistical Aggregates V. Saligrama, Z. Chen CVPR 2012.
• Limited view angle iterative CT reconstruction S. J. Kisner, E. Haneda, C. Bouman, S. Skatter, M. Kourinny and S. Bedford in Proc. SPIE, vol. 8296, 2012. p. 82960F 2012.
• Graph Constrained Group Testing M. Cheraghchi, A. Karbasi, S. Mohajer, V. Saligrama IEEE Transaction on Information Theory 2012.
• Multi-Stage Classifier Design K. Trapeznikov, V. Saligrama, D. Castanon ACML 2012.
• Real-Time Activity Search of Surveillance Video G. Castanon, V. Saligrama, P. M. Jodoin, A. Caron IEEE Advanced Video and Signal-Based Surveillance (AVSS) 2012.
• Boolean Compressed Sensing and Noisy Group Testing G. Atia, V. Saligrama IEEE Trans. On Information Theory 2012.
• Dynamic Context for Tracking Behind Occlusions F. Xiong, O. Camps and M. Sznaier Proc. ECCV, to appear 2012.
• A Convex Optimization Approach to Synthesizing Bounded Complexity l∞ Filters F. Blanchini and M. Sznaier IEEE Trans. Aut. Contr, Vol 57, (1), pp. 216 – 221 2012.
• Fast Algorithms for Structured Robust Principal Component Analysis Camps, Octavia IEEE CVPE 2012 Proceedings 2012.

Search Posters

• Euclidean Structure Recovery from Motion in Prespective Image Sequences via Hankle Rank Minimization Mario Sznaier, Octavia Camps, Mustafa Ayazoglu
• Fluid Models for Dense Croed Tracking Oliver Lehmann, Gilead Tadmor
• Activity Recognition using Dynamic Subspace Angles Octavia Camps, Mario Sznaier, Binlong Li, Mustafa Ayazoglu, Teresa Mao, Necmiye Ozay
• Kernel Low-Rank Representation of Clustering and Classification Joseph Wang, Venkatesh Saligrama , David Castanon
• Dynamics Based Tracking and Detection of Explosive Threats Octavia Camps, Mario Sznaier, Mustafa Ayazoglu , Caglayan Dicle, Binlong Li, Teresa Mao
• Real-Time Airport Security Checkpoint Surveillance Ziyan Wu, Keri Eustis , Eric Ameres, Richard J. Radke
• Multi-View Linear Tomography for Explosives Detection In Carry-on Luggage Zachary Sun, W. CLem Karl
• X-ray Diffraction Tompgraphic Imaging and Reconstruction Ke Chen, David Castanon
• Toward Model-Based Reconstruction in Scanned Baggage Security Applications Pengchong Jin, Eri Haneda, Charles. A. Bouman, Ken D. Sauer
• An MCNP-Based Tool for Polychromatic X-ray CT with Applications to Advanced Algorithm Development and Verification Oguz Semerci , Christopher Mutzel, Eric L> Miller