I’m confused. I assume it’s a similar concept to X-Ray, but when you go through TSA line and look on their computers, there’s wireframes of everything in your bag. How?
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It is x-ray. The way an x-ray scanner works is that they send x-rays through what is being scanned and then records how much x-rays comes out the other side. Different materials absorb x-rays at different rates. There are also different wavelengths of x-rays which gets absorbed differently. In a medical x-ray they can therefore use different settings to get images that show different things, not just bones. In the security scanners they use multiple wavelengths at once to generate a colour image.
The wireframe view is just a display option. The raw data from the security scanners look similar to the medical x-rays. However in order to get a better contrast and help the agents see shapes they convert the image to display where the density changes instead of showing the density itself. So for example a lithium ion battery is very dense and does not let through much x-rays and would appear almost completely black (or white) on the raw data. So it is hard to spot a gun on top of the battery. However when you just display the changes in density the battery shows up as just an outline. So the gun will show up as a similar outline making it much easier to spot.
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