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Remote detection of buried landmines using a bacterial sensor

Nature Biotechnology volume 35, pages 308–310 (2017)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

Finding where landmines and improvised explosive devices are buried remains risky. Currently, landmines are detected by personnel in the field using methods that, in principle, have remained largely unaltered for the past 75 years. The obvious risks to life that this poses, the large proportion of false-positive identifications, as well as an extremely limited ability to detect non-metallic landmines, means that a need exists for alternative methods for detecting landmines from a safe standoff distance. Here we report a small-scale field trial that uses a bacterial biosensor for the remote detection of anti-personnel mines.

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Figure 1: Optical scanning system and alginate-encapsulated bacterial sensors.
Figure 2: Remote fluorescence map of the target site.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Shimshon Belkin & Sharon Yagur-Kroll

  2. Applied Physics and the Brojde Center for Innovative Engineering and Computer Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Yossef Kabessa, Victor Korouma, Tali Septon, Yonatan Anati & Aharon J Agranat

  3. Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel

    Cheinat Zohar-Perez, Zahi Rabinovitz & Amos Nussinovitch

Authors
  1. Shimshon Belkin
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  2. Sharon Yagur-Kroll
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  3. Yossef Kabessa
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  4. Victor Korouma
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  5. Tali Septon
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  6. Yonatan Anati
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  7. Cheinat Zohar-Perez
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  8. Zahi Rabinovitz
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  9. Amos Nussinovitch
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  10. Aharon J Agranat
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Correspondence to Shimshon Belkin.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Methods (PDF 396 kb)

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Matlab algorithm files (analyzeData.rar) (ZIP 4 kb)

Supplementary Code 2

Matlab algorithm files (mappingAndLocation.rar) (ZIP 2 kb)

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Belkin, S., Yagur-Kroll, S., Kabessa, Y. et al. Remote detection of buried landmines using a bacterial sensor. Nat Biotechnol 35, 308–310 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3791

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