The main building of University of Tartu, Estonia. Photo: Tõnu Mauring.
An international consortium led by researchers from the University of Tartu (UT) and start-up GScan OÜ received 7.5 million euros from the European Commission to create a large-scale prototype of a cosmic-ray tomography device. In the course of security checks, the device would enable border control, customs and law enforcement authorities to detect illegal goods in trucks and sea containers safely and fast.
According to Madis Kiisk, Associate Professor in Ionizing Radiation Physics of the University of Tartu and co-founder of GScan, there is currently no technology that would be cheap and fast enough to scan large quantities of cargo. This is why only a fraction of cargo is scanned in the European Union and the international trade in general. Researchers from the UT Institute of Physics and iCV laboratory of the UT Institute of Technology and the start-up company GScan OÜ are trying to find a solution to