These may be the closest thing to the MMW images that TSA won't reveal. Figures 4 and 6 seem pretty graphic to me.

Title is "Public Security Screening for Metallic Objects with Millimetre-wave
Images" from Heriot-Watt University.

http://sites.google.com/site/randomsets/mm.pdf

There have been other MMW images that were released to the internet which are more graphic than these. Wasn't there even a video of an actual MMW monitor? These images are not very good. The difference in explicitness, resolution, clarity, and porntasticness between MMW and backscatter x-ray is extreme. I still wouldn't be scanned by an MMW machine without the fig leaf software though. If I were a TSO intending to enhance my porn collection I would definitely be looking for a job at an airport with backscatter x-ray scanners. There's just no comparison.

I agree the thumbnails in that article do not seem nearly as detailed as other MMW images I have seen.

But I'm glad to have the academic article - I had very little understanding of how MMW worked. ^

I can see why the TSA wants backscatter instead of MMW. Those images would be useless against a competent opponent.

delete..

It's probably important to remember that even with the higher-resolution backscatter scanners, the TSA is still running a 70% failure rate - because they're still missing the stuff in the carry-on baggage.

As long as they're fixated on high-tech solutions that will be implemented by idiots, they're going to continue to fail.

I'm not saying the backscatter is going to work--remember that report some weeks ago. I'm just saying the MMW is far worse. Backscatter is at least good enough that it makes the TSA think it would work, never mind that it can't detect something smoothed against the body properly, nor can it see something that's not on the body at all. (It could miss a gun in a hip holster so long as the gun doesn't shadow the body at all.)

I'm a little confused - how can the MMW be "worse" when neither system does what the TSA claims they're using it for?

Backscatter will at least catch the sloppy bomber. MMW probably won't.

OMG! Ultrasound ghosts!!!

At least that is what I saw when I first glanced at the images in this academic paper. I don't think they are anywhere near pornography as many claim and they certainly aren't detailed enough to show "all that."

I don't think that these things are capable of high resolutions like many claim to be. These machines are not cameras yet many seem to think that they are capable of photographic quality images. Until some are actually somehow leaked or EPIC or some organization gets their hands on the actual images I am going to continue to stand by what I believe.

Well it is TSA/DHS that is making us think they are lying about how graphic the images the scanners produce are.

First they claimed that the images they released were actually what the screener in the secret room sees. Then they turned around and said no those are not the images because they couldn't release tha actual size and resolution of the image the screener sees in the secret room because they weren't allowed to do that. But they assure us that the passengers privacy is protected because the screener is locked in the secret room and the passengers face is blurred.

The question has been asked, but not one person has ever answered the question about what the reason is for blurring the faces, of the passengers, on a image that doesn't show graphic detail of the passengers body, and doesn't show really good details of what the persons face looks like.

Kind of makes one suspicious when TSA/DHS sees the need to blur the faces of passenger on an image that looks like an ultrasound ghost and the person can't be recognized in the bodyscan image.

I do know one thing. Some of the images of unborn babies created by 3d ultrasound are quite impressive. If a baby, inside the mothers womb, can be seen that clearly by an ultrasound machine.

Then it is ridiculous to believe that the NOS/WBI machines are going to produce a ghostly image with less detail, than a 3D ultrasound image, when the NOS/WBI is being used to search for bombs, or bomb making material hidden on the human body.

I hope you are not betting your life on that.

http://www.catsa-acsta.gc.ca/file/Li...dy_scanner.pdf

The pictures you saw in the OP were a number of years old.

I'm explaining why the TSA would see it as better. The reality is that the bad guys have competent bombmakers, any scanner that can't catch the product of a competent bombmaker is pretty much useless in reality.