chemical imagers?

i have heard from some friends that there is a technology in use by the military and police that can detect and image certain chemicals from a distance with a camera of some sort, and that this might be possible to do through walls.

A spectrometer, combined with some sort of IR technology would probably do the trick. We're getting really good at filtering out ambient readings and focusing on a particular ranges of the spectrum.

I'm just speculating all this, but I'm interested and I'm going to take a look around. I'll post links to what I find later.

DC

I knew a guy who was in a Naval Special Warfare role who swore they had an electro-optical device that could identify the contents of a container ship at a distance. After some minor digging I could neither confirm or deny the existance of such technology, so I didn't think much more about it. If you have heard similar reports it may be worth some more research. Certanly I will post more if I learn anything.

Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI)

Was this what you were looking for?

that sounds pretty close, but i was thinking on a much smaller scale, like what a person has in their pockets while walking down the street. thank for the info though

Technical but interesting

Here�s a PDF that I think is close to what you�re eluding to.

Sandia National Laboratories

GlobalSecurity.org

OEReports

Chemical Imager Reveals �Invisible� Fingerprints


With this, we might be able to see chemical and biological substances from ground and space.

DeltaChaos

If there is a $600 alcohol detector already on the market for law enforcement I don't see why it would be unreasonable to think that a portable spectrograph isn't in the field for the military. Link
I found this page which sounds more like what we are looking for: portable detection platform
Hey, this is fun! Anyone else on the scent?

Great links, DC

its scary the technology the govt has. and whats even scarier is that their tech is probably around 30 years more advanced than they let us know of.