Chemistry is right for T-ray imaging

What do you get if you combine very high frequency microwaves, real-time imaging, submillimeter spatial resolution, and chemical sensitivity? The answer is Terahertz, or “T”-ray, imaging. This novel imaging technology operates in the submillimeterwave region of the electro-magnetic spectrum, a portion of the spectrum that was previously hard to access using conventional technologies. But recent advances in high-speed optoelectronic and femtosecond laser technology facilitate generation and detection of short bursts of terahertz radiation, which have proven to be extremely useful for spectroscopic measurements in the submillimeter-wave range. T-ray imaging combines these spectroscopic measurements with real-time imaging and advanced signal processing and recognition, so that each pixel element of the image contains spectroscopic information about the object. In many cases, the spectroscopic information gives us significant clues about the chemical composition of the object of interest