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Sir - I was interested to read Nick Fox’s account of the ‘psychology of the X-ray system operator’ in September’s edition of SMT (‘X-ray vision’, pp 30-32).

Checkpoint screening has been identified as the Achilles Heel of the aviation security sector by no less a body than the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the USA.

Since 9/11, there has been an amazing lack of attention afforded to securing and upgrading checkpoints. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent globally to prevent other avenues of attack, yet next to nothing has been done to improve the screening process.

The National Commission has now released its final report on 9/11 and, as expected, has been highly critical of the US Government and the aviation industry in general. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it appears that much more could have been done to thwart what remains the world’s worst ever terrorist outrage.

No-one can deny that many positive steps have been taken in the US, the UK and around the globe to make air travel a more secure environment. However, we must all address the screening process more rigorously.

It’s likely that quadruple resonance systems (a package comprising coil, transmit and receive electronics, signal acquisition and processing and control subsystems suitable for OEM integration with linescan X-ray baggage scanner units) will be available before year end.

A solution that would cover a broad range of threat scenarios.