Safety tech

Jennifer Knight

Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2001 | 10:08 a.m.

Before America's sense of safety was assaulted on Sept. 11, Evangelos Yfantis was busy in his university laboratory transforming the digital language of ones and zeros into a computer program that would make airlines safer.

Now the technology developed two years ago by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas computer science professor may be coming into play.

Yfantis has developed two systems that work in tandem at an airport to identify potential terrorists and spot luggage that is not attached to a passenger boarding an airplane.

"Ideally, a terrorist attack could be intervened with this computer technology," Yfantis said.

The systems are based on technology in use every day. The same infrared devices that give soldiers in Afghanistan night vision, is the same technology that Yfantis uses to scan the faces of passengers and identify known felons who pose a threat.

The same infrared bar codes that are scanned to price a carton of milk would be used to match luggage to an owner.

The research holds great promise for UNLV, and has the potential to generate jobs for graduate students as well as heighten the school's research reputation.

UNLV is slowly gaining national recognition for research. Recently, U.S. News & World Report moved UNLV up in ranking from a regional university to a doctoral granting research institution. The new status puts UNLV in the company of 50 other prestigious universities nationwide.

UNLV currently has 20 specialized research centers. A hydrogen-electric bus being developed at the Center for Engineering Research could offer an alternative to fuel. Two drugs developed at the Cancer Research institute promise to reduce the rate of breast cancer in high-risk patients. The drugs are currently being tested on patients through clinical trials.

"My goal is to create a good footing for our graduate students so they don't leave for Los Angeles," Yfantis said.

Stephen Rice, UNLV's provost for research, said Yfantis' systems could result in a separate company that would generate additional research income for the university.

"That is one project that holds a great deal of promise for a spin-off company," Rice said.

In addition to Yfantis' project, Rice is in talks now to create other private-public partnerships that would link the research of university scientists to private companies marketing new inventions.

Research grants provide an important part of universities' budgets, officials said.

Last year, UNLV secured $28 million in research money, according to figures supplied earlier this year by Dean Paul Ferguson, UNLV's dean of graduate studies. The University of Nevada, Reno received $87 million research funds in the same year.

Yfantis hopes his systems will not only generate more research money for UNLV but also will have commercial value. The systems should speed up the screening of luggage and passengers and should improve airport security, Yfantis said.

Ideally, Yfantis said, everyone who boards a plane will have an infrared picture taken of their face.

The system instantly maps out more than 2,000 unique areas in the forehead created by the vascular system. The resulting image is more accurate than a fingerprint, he said.

The image can then be compared to a database of known criminals or terrorists to identify passengers who may pose a threat. That same technology also can be used for banking security, computer access and myriad other applications.

The second screening device is a simple one that begins when passengers checking their luggage at the ticket counter.

The luggage is weighed and measured by infrared beams. Each suitcase is then tagged with a bar code that corresponds to the passenger.

The passengers get a matching bar code attached to their ticket. Tickets would be scanned at the gates, and if a passenger does not board a plane, a computer alert sounds, and the baggage is removed.

An electronic baggage I.D. system may seem irrelevant, considering hijackers on Sept. 11 used the planes as weapons.

However, bombs on planes are still thought to be a threat, and only 3 to 5 percent of airport baggage is checked, according to statistics provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General.

The Federal Aviation Administration vowed to check more bags after a rogue suitcase packed with a bomb exploded in 1988 on Pan Am Flight 103 over in Lockerbie, Scotland. Luggage without a passenger attached to it was of particular concern to investigators of the Flight 103 crash.

Aside from checking luggage, the FAA also profiles passengers. Airlines scan through databases containing information on millions of passengers. The computer sends up a red flag for behavior that may be suspicious.

There are still holes in FAA's computer screening systems. Bomb detecting devices won't fit into every airline terminal because of their size and the FAA's computer security screening in many cases is not up to date, according to a recent L.A. Times article.

Yfantis claims his invention will add another dimension to existing security measures. The only step left is to get the product to market.

One private company has arranged to do that and is in talks with officials at the FAA to make that happen.

"After Sept. 11, everything changed and this (project) became vitally important," said Montey Greenawalt, president of Inomati, Inc. a private contractor that is readying Yfantis' invention for the FAA.

"There's more urgency now that there ever was when we first started talking about this technology."

Greenawalt said that his company is six to eight months away from implementing the technology. After that, the FAA would review a proposal and decide on whether to implement the devices.

And Yfantis with his seven-day a week work schedule said he is not stopping with developing just the airport scanning system. His use of digital imagery is reaching into the medical field.

Yfantis can digitize any X-ray, MRI image or any other medical scan and run it through a program that will diagnose cancerous cells. He demonstrated the new technology with an image of a patient's prostate. Nothing seemed unusual until he pressed a button on his computer and up popped a red outline.

"The cancer we are looking at is a small granule," he said. "Initially when the doctors looked at the picture they said there was no cancer. When we did the digital image, we came to an agreement that it was cancer."

The most promising technology is a process he calls the informatic bloodless diagnostics. In layman's terms, an infrared beam will be able to scan your blood and search for vitamin deficiencies, genetic information or abnormalities.

"It's strange," said Yfantis. "This is Star Trek stuff that was once folklore, and now it's going to be real."