LAS VEGAS–Vidiation, a year-old firm that has developed a video-based approach to monitor sites and facilities for theft of radiological materials, has launched Vidiation- Radiation Analytics Detection System (V-RADS) and says it already has its first order for the product.
The customer for V-RADS is a regional emergency response center in Illinois that is acquiring two units, which includes a server and software to be able to run up to 10 video cameras each, company officials at the ASIS International 2007 conference here tell TR2. Vidiation is also working with a systems integrator for a test at one or two subway stations that are part of the Metro System in Washington, D.C., they say.
Vidiation completed a second round of testing with V-RADS over the summer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in preparation for the market launch (TR2, Aug. 8).
The company plans to continue testing and developing V-RADS. Toward this end Vidiation has received a $150,000 grant from the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) that will help it modify its algorithm to work with MPEG-4 digital video cameras, says Gordon Bingham, vice president of marketing for the Chicago-based firm.
Receipt of the grant qualifies Vidiation for potential additional grants and the company hopes to get a $1.5 million follow-on award from DNDO, Bingham says. That second grant would allow Vidiation more flexibility in how the company wants to further develop V-RADS, he says.
One area of future development is to be able to triangulate the source of radioactive material that may have been stolen and is being moved somewhere inside a person’s clothing or in a vehicle. Using multiple cameras equipped with V-RADS could allow security officials to quickly pinpoint where illicit radiological material is, Bingham says.
Watchdog Video Corp., a veteran owned service disabled small business that is using V-RADS in the deployment in Illinois, tells TR2 it has a number of customers interested in the system. The military, trucking and delivery firms are all potential customers, the company says. Moreover, it sees demand also being driven by the Department of Homeland Security’s desire to have radiation detection systems in place in major U.S. cities.
The software algorithm in V-RADS allows existing video surveillance cameras to be used as detection devices for the movement of radiological material. The technology senses the interaction between gamma radiation and charge-coupled devices used in video cameras. An operator watching displays where V-RADS is being used sees static on the screen when the system detects gamma radiation where it shouldn’t be.
In a video clip shown by Vidiation at ASIS a camera is positioned outside a hospital room where equipment that uses radiation is stored. In the clip a man is shown entering the room and then leaving it shortly thereafter. After the man exits the room, static appears on the display while the man makes his way down a hallway.
Bingham says that a V-RADS equipped camera doesn’t have to be focusing on a particular person or thing for it to pick up nearby gamma radiation where it shouldn’t be.
V-RADS also provides an active alert in a command center that can also be distributed to cell phones or pagers.