Technology Benchmarks
The ability to detect explosives vapors with high sensitivity and high specificity is a longstanding problem in the homeland security industry. High sensitivity is required to obtain true positives from very limited amounts of compounds. High specificity is required to minimize false positives that create unnecessary alarms.
Trace detectors are commercially available that can achieve high sensitivity, but lack specificity, which leads to false positives. Detection technologies, such as Raman spectroscopy, have high specificity, but lack the high sensitivity to be considered a trace detector.
The gold standard for explosives detection is ion mobility spectroscopy (IMS) and mass spectroscopy (MS). These technologies provide a compromise between sensitivity & specificity. They have good sensitivity and can be considered a trace detector. In addition, they have moderate specificity, which reduces false positives.
The SpectraFluidics solution provides a unique combination of having both high sensitivity & specificity. In addition, since the technology is based upon physics that only occurs at the micro- and nano-scales, it is naturally small in size and highly portable.