Novel standoff detection system for the classification of chemical and biological hazardous substances combining temporal and spectral laser induced fluorescence techniques

Abstract

In the effort to reduce the potential risk of human exposure to chemical and biological hazardous material, the demand increases for a detection system which rapidly identifies possible threats from a distance to avoid direct human contact to these materials. In this scope, we present a novel detection system which is able to simultaneously measure spectrally and temporally resolved laser induced fluorescence signals excited by two consecutive laser pulses with differ-ent central wavelengths at 266 nm and 355 nm. The setup enables fast data acqui-sition that provides a complete dataset in less than a few milliseconds at repetition rates of 100 Hz. Furthermore, with its modular design it can be transported easily for operation at different locations. First measurements indicate a high perfor-mance and a good distinguishability of bacterial specimen within a limited set of three representative bacterial species. Together with the consecutive classification procedure, the setup promises to become a valuable tool for standoff detection of bio-hazards.