ALERT Datasets

Currently ALERT has four active datasets, available free of charge to academic and government research communities, that have developed out of transition tasks supported by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The datasets that are currently available are related to ALERT’s Computerized Tomography (CT) Segmentation Initiative, Reconstruction Initiative, Automated Threat Recognition (ATR) Initiative and ALERT Video Analytics Re-Identification work.

The purpose of these sets is to provide data to academic and government researchers, to discover and evaluate the present state-of-the-art information, and to stimulate additional communication and research in the algorithm research community. Our data is available to academic and government researchers under a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). If you would like to inquire about accessing this data, please complete our Dataset Request Form.

ALERT datasets are also available to ALERT industrial members as a benefit of membership. If you are interested in becoming a member to access the datasets for industrial use, please complete our Dataset Request Form. For more information on membership, please contact Emel Bulat, [email protected]

CT Datasets

ALERT leveraged the advances of medical CT to contract with a vendor to obtain representative datasets of packed luggage and reference objects. Luggage was scanned on a state-of-the-art medical CT scanner at the vendor’s factory. Approximately 900 objects were placed in luggage and scanned to produce 62 luggage datasets to span the spectrum of packing, density, arrangement, orientation, and size difficulty.

Information on the datasets is contained in Section 5.3 of the CT program’s final report.

Reconstruction Initiative Dataset

ALERT created a database of projection and image data corresponding to scans of objects of interest in the presence of various amounts of clutter, using a medical CT scanner. Reconstructed images using filtered back-projection that match the images obtained on the medical scanner were used to generate the database.

Information on the datasets is contained in Section 5.2 of the Reconstruction initiative’s final report.

Automated Threat Recognition (ATR) Initiative

ALERT developed automated target recognition algorithms (ATR) for CT-based explosive detection systems (EDS). The research groups were provided with images from scans of targets packed in bags and scanned on a medical CT scanner. The targets were chosen to create detection scenarios similar to what vendors face when detecting explosives using their CT-based EDS.

Information on the datasets is contained in Section 5.2 of the ATR initiative’s final report.

ALERT Airport Re-Identification Dataset

As part of the ALERT video analytics effort, researchers at Northeastern University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute developed an annotated dataset that accurately reflects the real-world person re-identification problem. The dataset was constructed using video data from the six cameras installed post central security checkpoint at an active commercial airport within the United States. 

> Read about the Airport Re-Identification Dataset

 

CT Segmentation Scan

The above is a representation of a CT-scan of luggage.

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