Edmond Detective Creates New Way To Fight War On Terror

The FBI and bomb squads across the world are focusing in on an Edmond detective to help fight terrorism.

Detective Marion Cain thought to use the same X-ray device on suspected terrorists who have explosives on or in their bodies. In order to test for imaging and safety, this year-long research project involved testing on cadavers at OU.

Cain came up with the explosive idea against the war on terror, but the 13-year police veteran admits he was nervous at first about telling anyone.

"Oh yeah, you walk in your captain's office and you've got your coffee and you know what you're going to say. ‘I want to go X-ray a dead body and attach a suicide device to it.' Once the shrieking stops… I'm kidding. This is definitely an out-of-the-box type of thing," Cain said.

Inside every bomb squad unit there's a little X-ray machine and they print out in about 90 seconds. Bomb squads across the U.S. use these out in the field to look inside suitcases or trucks thought to contain bombs.

Cain says terrorists are always coming up with new ways to blow things up.

"Now you got guys wearing something around their body. So it's now the natural progression…to go inside," Cain said. "That's a real problem."

Cain wondered why not use these tools they already have on suspects? The research project has been going on about a year now with health imaging expert, Dr. Isaac Rutel.

"The whole goal is, can I X-ray through a human body and see the device that's positioned on the other side?" Rutel said. "And the short answer is, ‘Yes, we have that capability.'"

Rutel says the radiation level given off by the bomb squad's X-ray is comparable to a chest X-ray. And implementation of the idea is easy since bomb squads already have the X-ray in bomb squad units.

The FBI is keeping an eye on the progress if and when more departments want or have to use this method to see inside a person.