Meet MilliView: India's First Indigenous mmWave Scanner That Detects Hidden Non-Metal Threats In Under 5 Seconds

Hyderabad: For passengers, airport security is a familiar obstacle course—long queues, laptop out, belt off, pockets emptied, and bodies scanned. But while ordinary travellers are slowed down, some threats still manage to slip past undetected, especially when they don’t involve metal. Indian airports primarily rely on conventional metal detectors for security screening, but a gradual transition to full-body scanners capable of detecting concealed non‑metallic threats such as powders, liquids, organic materials, and gels is already underway.

The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), responsible for safeguarding 73 civil airports across India, is currently evaluating these full-body scanners through trials at Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Kochi airports, with plans to expand them to Srinagar, Jammu, and Ayodhya.

Complementing this initiative, Vehant Technologies, a deep-tech company collaborating with IIT Delhi, last week unveiled MilliView, India's first indigenous millimetre-wave (mmWave) body scanner. Designed and developed specifically for India’s security environment, it complies with BCAS (Bureau of Civil Aviation Security) guidelines. It has undergone testing and detailed evaluation by Indian government authorities, which found its performance meeting the required operational criteria for airports, CISF, and government agencies.

Talking to ETV Bharat, Vehant Technologies CEO and co-founder Kapil Bardeja says, “If a person conceals gel, detonators, flammable substances, plastic, powder, organic substances, or other suspicious materials beneath clothing or close to the body, the scanner can identify them within seconds."

Explaining the working of the machine, Bardeja adds that the scanner only asks individuals to simply stand in a particular position, while the system does the screening process. Results appear in seconds, enabling operators to clear passengers swiftly, Bardeja says, adding that the scan-to-decision process takes under 5 seconds, boosting checkpoint efficiency while minimising inconvenience.

Privacy-First Security Screening

MilliView uses a gender-neutral avatar for body imaging and claims to preserve privacy while maintaining security screening. The CEO claims that privacy was a foundational design principle for the machine from day one.

MilliView is India's first indigenous Millimetre-Wave Body Scanner (Vehant Technologies)

“We understood that for advanced body scanning technology to be broadly accepted, it would need to produce strong security outcomes without compromising an individual's dignity, privacy, or comfort,” he says. “The actual problem was how to make sure security operators get useful, actionable threat information while removing the need to actually view any anatomical details of the person being scanned.”

Rather than generating or displaying an image of the individual's body, the system's AI-powered software processes the scan data and automatically maps any detected threat location onto a generic, gender-neutral digital avatar. Security personnel only see the location and nature of a potential threat, not the physical characteristics of the individual being screened.

Bardeja says that the approach creates a strong separation between threat detection and personal identity. “The operator receives all the information necessary to make an informed security decision, while the scanned individual retains complete anatomical privacy,” he adds. “Combined with robust access controls and data security measures, this privacy-first architecture enables MilliView to deliver high-performance screening while meeting modern expectations around personal privacy, passenger dignity, and responsible use of security technology.

Speed and Accuracy: Assessment in under 5 seconds

The co-founder admits that achieving a complete scan-to-decision process in under 5 seconds was one of the most demanding parts of the product development journey. He explains that millimetre‑wave scanners generate massive data sets, requiring fast algorithms to distinguish harmless items from threats. Developing this capability took years of refining models and testing to ensure real‑time, intelligent decisions with strong detection accuracy.

Reducing false alarms, Bardeja says, was equally critical, so the team built algorithms balancing speed and precision. The final system detects both metallic and non‑metallic threats, highlights them instantly, and enables operators to respond within 5 seconds without compromising security.

In picture: Vehant CEO Kapil Bardeja (Left) and CTO Anoop G Prabhu (Right) (Vehant Technologies)

“In security screening, speed and accuracy often clash, and if you push one forward, the other might slip a little. The problem for us was ensuring that security personnel got highly dependable threat assessments without creating a slowdown at busy high-traffic checkpoints,” he says. “The core thing was optimising the full stack, from where the images are captured and how the signals are treated, all the way to AI-based threat identification.”

Need for an Indigenous mmWave Body Scanner, Tailored to India

Discussing the conceptualisation of the indigenous mmWave body scanner, Kapil Bardeja points to the dual factors of evolving security threats and India’s dependence on imported systems.

He recalls the turning point came when he realised threats were advancing faster than the screening technologies in place. "For years, airports and high-security facilities leaned mainly on metal detectors, but they were never built to spot today’s emerging threats, which include powder, plastic, ceramics, sheet explosives, gel-based substances, and composite materials,” he states.

Vehant Technologies is an IIT Delhi-incubated deeptech company (ETV Bharat via Vehant Technologies)

This is where newer tech matters, Bardeja adds, explaining that millimetre‑wave imaging combined with AI‑powered analytics offers a broader detection capability, allowing security personnel to identify both metallic and non‑metallic threats while still maintaining operational efficiency, passenger privacy, and a seamless screening experience.

“Our collaboration with IIT Delhi is an industry-academia collaboration, helping us bridge cutting-edge research with real-world security requirements. The result of this five-year R&D journey is MilliView, a truly indigenous platform that combines advanced imaging, artificial intelligence, and India-specific threat intelligence into a solution designed for the country's evolving security needs,” Bardeja says.

Talking about India’s growing reliance on imported scanners, he says this dependence exposes a critical mismatch: global systems are not designed for India’s unique threat patterns, regulatory requirements, or deployment realities.

"This gap inspired the creation of MilliView—a homegrown platform customised for Indian security agencies and critical infrastructure," Bardeja says. "MilliView is developed from that vision, combining advanced imaging, AI-powered threat detection, and India-specific security intelligence into a solution designed, developed, and manufactured entirely in India."

Bardeja says that each nation works inside its own security environment, shaped by its threat landscape, infrastructure, passenger volumes, regulatory frameworks, and operational procedures, which is why a solution designed primarily for Western markets may not always address the specific requirements of Indian security operations. India’s security context requires AI models tailored to local regulations, threat profiles, and operational realities, which is why Vehant trained and refined algorithms to identify SRIs defined by Indian agencies.

Instead of copying global models, the team designed millimetre-wave imaging algorithms to match India's security environment, Bardeja says, calling it one of the main challenges, which demanded years of research, testing, and refinement. The difficulty only escalated while trying to retain speed, comfort, and privacy intact, given the massive data volumes created by millimetre-wave imaging.

“The objective was not simply to detect objects but to accurately identify and classify items that Indian security agencies consider critical from a risk and compliance perspective. This required continuous algorithm training, validation, and testing to ensure reliable performance across diverse scenarios,” Bardeja says.

He emphasises that India’s scale and diversity—from crowded airports to critical infrastructure—demands high accuracy, speed, and adaptability. This “India‑first” design approach is what distinguishes MilliView from generic global systems, he claims.