RALEIGH, N.C. (WPTF) – Tired of dumping your drink and holding up the line at TSA? A Duke University spinout, Quadridox, is working on new tech that could speed up airport security—and let you keep your water bottle too. Joel Greenberg, the President of Quadridox, says the initial groundwork for Quadridox was done when he was a professor at Duke.
“My and some of my co-founders started Quadridox to commercialize and deploy some of the technology that we had developed to support the TSA and the traveling public,” said Greenberg
Stated in Duke Today, Quadridox uses X-rays, but not the way doctors detect broken bones. Those X-rays make pictures by passing straight through objects. Quadridox’s X-ray diffraction imaging, on the other hand, is used to analyze the structure of materials by observing how X-rays bounce off atoms within them, providing greater specificity of the materials being viewed.
“We developed a new kind of X-Ray technology that lets us make images like the X-Rays you would see in the hospital, but at the same time it also lets us determine what each of the items in your bag is actually made of,” said Greenberg.
Having that information will make going through airport security quicker, resulting in more accuracy and fewer delays. Potentially, Greenberg says their technology offers the potential for people to bring liquids on flights again.
“For the Quadridox product we’re focused right now on checked baggage,” said Greenburg. “The first and most important impact is that it means that the TSA is less likely to open your bag, it means that your bags more likely to make it where you actually end up and it also helps make the TSA’s job a lot easier.”
But it’s not just about how this X-Ray technology will help the aviation industry, the same technology they’ve been using has helped develop a comparable product that focuses on medical imaging.
“It helps identify cancerous regions in breast biopsies and lumpectomies,” said Greenburg. “So by better analyzing what a sample is made of we can either apply it to the aviation security space or improve cancer detection.”
In a press release from Duke University, Greenberg said Quadridox would not be where it is today without support from Duke and sustained federal funding.