OP, You will likely be 'fine' going through the scanner. They have to see people with bandaids and patches all the time. If they do detect it in the scanner, they will simply rub their hands over it after you leave the scanner.
You might have a slightly better chance of zero detection if you opt out, but the end result of them rubbing their hands on you will be the same.
Most of us here will thank you for taking a stand against the TSA's ridiculous 'security' practices if you do choose to opt out.
Originally Posted by
WillCAD
You're assuming this workflow on a NoS with ATR:
1) NoS emits MMW energy
2) MMW energy reflects off suspect, er, targeted individual
3) NoS receives reflected energy
4) NoS composes a digital image from the scan returns
5) ATR software analyses the digital image for pixels of a color inconsistent with human skin
6) ATR software lights up the appropriate portions of the stick figure indicator
However, I believe that there is a different workflow:
1) NoS emits MMW energy
2) MMW energy reflects off suspect, er, targeted individual
3) NoS receives reflected energy
4) NoS passes the raw scan data to the ATR software without composing an image from them
5) ATR software analyses the raw scan data for energy return signatures inconsistent with human skin
6) ATR software lights up the appropriate portions of the stick figure indicator
A) Why do you believe that?
B) Your hypothetical 'raw data' is simply the radiometric temperature of each point in the raster pattern. A more common term used to define a point in a raster pattern is a
pixel. The only difference between your hypothetical 'transmitted raw scan data' and a 'digital image' is
literally a file header to define how many pixels are in each row and column of the 2-D array. So it's a pedantic and essentially pointless distinction in the first place, and in the second place, I believe it is a technical impossibility.
Here is a paper which has a fairly straightforward description and proof of concept of how MMW imaging works:
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/10350...ing_sensor.pdf
As you can see, you cannot simply look for 'pixels that aren't giving the signature of skin', (there are lots of green pixels in the photo, most of them aren't a gun...) you have to look for 'pixels that aren't giving the temperature of skin
where we expect skin to be'. And to do that, you need to process it as an image.
The 'edges' or 'anomalies' or 'patterns' they are looking for will be larger than one pixel. The pixels MUST be analyzed as a 2-D array, where each pixel is examined in the context of the eight surrounding pixels. And a 2-D array of pixels IS a digital image. By definition.
C) I understand you
want to believe that the government is somehow trying to stick with the letter of the law through careful obfuscations, and your theory about raw data would mean that they are technically not lying. But as someone who has been on technical engineering and software projects, I think you're way off base.
There is no engineering contractor in the world, who, when faced with the problem of adding ATR to current MMW systems, would choose to redesign the fundamentals of the system, rather than slap a standard image analysis package on the current system, then add a step at the end to project the results onto a stick figure.
Further, the TSA would never even think to ask for a design that would cost 10 - 100x more, simply because they were worried about whether analysis was performed on a digital image versus raw data. Why go to all that trouble, when they regularly lie / obscure much less pedantic distinctions?